The Dead Can't Testify
by Nic-n'-Nyx
Summary: Mazes are fun, right? If he has any prayer of reaching Bianca, Nico must first figure out how to survive the Labyrinth - a moving maze that seems to enjoy squashing every last bit of hope and happiness. He may have to do the unthinkable, however... trust another person, and a shady one at that, to unlock the secrets of the maze and his own mind. WARNING: Mildly morbid.


"The Labyrinth exists to fool you. It will distract you." -Daedalus

"There's no way out." - Chris Rodriguez

"You make it sound like it's alive." - Percy Jackson

And yet...

"Keep your mind on what matters most. If you can do that, you might find the way." -Daedalus

oOo

I kept pressing one hand against the same wall I leaned against, as if it'd tell me any sooner than my spine if the grainy rock was going to give out. Movements were slow, dragged down by terror and the creaks and groans in the distance and the blackness of night in the maze.

My little blue flame was definitely not helping my night vision. But it was too cold to go without.

_It's snowing outside! I told you to bundle up,_ _**stolto!**_ _I should let you freeze off your fingers and toes, so you'll learn,_ she'd tell me as she had many times before. Her cap would slide sideways like it always does when her scarf and puffed coat mess with her thick, dark hair. Once I had voiced it to her, that she should pin her hair back or something, but she hadn't replied.

Then she would grab my gloves from the shelf with all the chips in it no one would tell me about and hold up my hands in hers, press them against the little streams and valleys in her palm, and pretend to bite my fingers off one by one as she put the gloves on.

It was alright, though. She never really bit off my fingers. Her smile was as nice and kind as it always was when her teeth gently touched my knuckles. Though sometimes I wondered what I'd have to do to make her mad enough that she did it for real.

If she ever did, I'd have told her, "Now I don't need the gloves."

Now I was crouching before a fire here in the dead of winter, unbitten fingers splayed wide in the cobalt flames, soaking up the meager warmth.

After five minutes, I switched hands. The maze had taken on a particularly cranky jeremiad during my wandering thoughts.

I swallowed thickly. An unhappy maze was not something I wanted to face. Around me, its cranky, lusting groans continued.

One to the right, far, far down a corridor. Another, sharper one to the left and much closer.

One behind me.

I turned, the cold sinking its relentless teeth into my bones and making them creak as I was forced to slowly, slowly look.

The wall was still there.

Still well beyond any fast movement, I faced the fire again, breath held and eyes scanning the devastating blackness.

Maybe, if I moved slow enough, the monsters and maze would mistake me for dead.

I could not see very well into the dark, not at all, but something told me there was nothing out there. At least, not very close.

Above me, the Labyrinth snickered and stretched.

I wrapped my arms around my torso. Though it hurt I was glad in the past two or so days my stomach had accepted nothing it would now reject.

I didn't dare start to think again. The maze could read minds. It would find her, it would see the sweetness in her smile and the light in her laugh and the way things didn't hurt when she was around, and see nothing but prey.

They'd come. They'd come for her and, worse, they'd come for me.

Demon bites hurt much worse than two day's worth of starvation.

I looked around again. Again. The sounds were closer.

Demons bites hurt much worse than lack of sleep, too.

I stamped out my blue flames and didn't think, just thought of her and ran down the nearest corridor.

oOo

I'd never been to this part of the maze before.

_What have you done? Have you tricked me?_

Well. If the maze did, it was not with this stone. The stone was real. I knew because it didn't give way to anything but my sword and the moisture I was able to lick from it was dripping out of cracks and sported a rusty tang.

Metal, I corrected. Metal and rock were kind of the same thing in the earth.

But the stone wasn't just stone. It was carved and chiseled and chipped at, long ago spent at the expense of someone else's pleasures. It'd been used like they didn't care if it was stone or metal or that it leaked water.

I couldn't name what these things were. The carvings. I could recall pictures, dimly, from a poster that had been hung at Westover Hall. But not what they meant.

_The maze reads minds,_ Minos had warned me before I'd sent him away. _It knows everything about you. It knows things that you don't even know. It'll eat you up, but not before letting you run around like a little rat. It doesn't like half-bloods much._

The maze wanted to eat me. It was a demon. He hadn't said that part, but I felt it. I'd run straight into the belly of a beast.

I closed my eyes and grit my teeth. I didn't care what the maze did to me. I used these tunnels as much as they used me; they were a hiding place. Demons, now, I'd come across down here. But not people. Not Percy or Annabeth or Connor or Travis.

And if walking into its gaping maws day after day was what it took to find Bianca, I'd be willing.

I stopped licking the stone carvings, tongue dry and sticky against a carefully torn crease.

_Bianca._

Slowly, I drew my tongue back in my mouth and got off my tip-toes, inching back to flat feet.

_ I'm almost as tall as you on my tip-toes, Sis!_

_ You're cheating._

_ No I'm not! Look!_

She'd chuckle. _Alright, alright. You're getting taller._

_ Taller than you?_

_ Maybe one day._

The freezing winds that'd chased me here curled up against my chest, gentle cat's paws waiting to unsheathe their weapons. I'd let myself think again.

Out of the corner of my eye, back the way I'd come from, I could see a silhouette standing. Standing and staring, horrifyingly still, as if it had nothing in the world to worry about.

Slowly, I backed away from the wall, sure to never look directly at it. My heart was racing. A scream had built in my throat, but it had been a long, long time since I could recall that complicated game one called verbal noise.

I _wanted _to scream. I did. I wanted to run to her, away from the maze and Camp and the thing watching me with such perverted interest. But I had told Bianca I was brave, and brave heroes don't run.

I couldn't let her know I'd lied.

Yet there was no middle ground. It was either break down and run, or move through gaseous sap and walk slowly away, too terrified to glance over my shoulder. By the time I next felt somewhat secure, the thing watching me had vanished.

oOo

Days later, I was not dead.

I scolded myself plenty nonetheless. _You've let the maze read you too many times! Minos said the maze was smart! It's gonna get you!_

But it never did.

Whatever game it was this maze liked best, hide and seek or tag or red-light green-light, it was pretty bad at it.

Hopscotch, maybe. I couldn't see such a vast, arthritic, sinister thing able to hop around ludicrously on one foot.

For whatever reason, the maze could not touch me.

_It can. It can. It's just biding its time. Minos said the maze is smart. Smart means patient; Bianca told me that. It's waiting. It's going to get me._

_ Something's always waiting… I'm always so close to losing…_

I considered calling to Minos again, just for company. For comfort. But I shuddered and cast the idea aside – Minos was scary, not comforting. His eyes were too bright for a dead man.

Dead.

_ No, she's not dead. Just lost. She probably tripped over her own feet and into the River, then swam ashore on the wrong side._

I closed my eyes and cradled my latest catch – some half-eaten sandwich fished from a dumpster in an alleyway not far from an exit to the maze – to my chest to protect it while I paused and engaged in the dangerous pastime called thought.

She'd yell at me for stealing. Stealing was wrong. It was a sin.

But I was hungry. Surely starving yourself was a sin, too?

_I'm sorry, Bianca. But I have to steal. I have to steal to eat, and I have to eat if I'm going to rescue you. And I will. I swear._

"Hello."

My eyes opened and saw nothing. The maze had vanished, along with my body and the crusted bread in my hands. Gone. There was only the blackness and the icy breath that washed over me from the left, caressing my cheeks and nibbling at my hair.

It made a heavy panting sound to accompany each exhale.

I could not move.

"Trespasser," the dog hissed at me. "Trespasser."

My mouth moved, but speech had not been mine since the day I ran from Camp.

_It's the maze. I'm not trespassing on your anything, _I wanted to say.

But I couldn't. Couldn't.

The dog licked its lips and stood, yellow eyes gleaming happily. "Trespasser can be eaten. Stay still."

Eaten.

That word snapped me out of it. I threw the crumpled sandwich at it and ran, ran as if I might start flying down the inky corridors.

An ear-splitting howl sliced clean through me and I ran faster, faster as I heard the bipedal monstrosity set off after me at a steady lope.

_No. No, no, I don't want to be eaten. I still have someone to live for._

_ I know I do._

Too late, I heard the footsteps rocketing towards me from ahead, too.

No time to halt. I kept running until I crashed into it, taking it by such surprise it landed beneath me with a disgruntled _oof_. It was surprisingly light and thin for another dog-headed man.

I didn't wait for the other to catch up. I sliced with my sword as hard as I could once, twice, three times just to be sure. I was not going to die here.

As scared as I was of this maze, as tempting as it sounded… not today. Not yet.

"Stop!" the thing beneath me screamed. "Great gods of Olympus, who the hell do you think you are?!"

"Die!" I yelled back. Or tried. No sound came out.

Something crashed hard into my face, cracking my cheek bone and sending me to an unpleasant meeting with the floor. Air vanished from my lungs.

It landed on top of me.

"No!" I yelled. For real this time. "NO!" My nails flashed up and tore like claws into flesh.

Flesh. Not fur.

"GET OFF!" I yelled, beyond caring. Whatever had tackled me, it didn't have much in it. A pained sound accompanied its absence.

I got to my feet and made to run, but a hand grabbed my ankle. I whirled to glare at it.

It was a boy.

He was Connor's age. Or maybe older. I didn't know. Tall and lanky with red-blonde hair – red edging on pink, like a strawberry (gods Bianca you loved strawberries I lied when I said I hated them I was just trying to make you argue, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry) – that hung in his eyes. Or, did. I could see the wide brown eyes now. The pale knuckles turning paler on my jeans.

Behind us, the monster's easygoing gait came closer.

"If you go that way," he rasped, "take me with you. I want to see your all-powerful butt get eaten."

"What's down there?" I demanded. The dog-man was closer still.

The boy smiled. "You don't wanna find out. It takes some pretty awesome skills to survive that tunnel, and I don't have time to teach you."

This was definitely the kind of stuck-up jerk Bianca would scold me for hanging around with, but I drew my sword and looked for a different corridor.

None.

The boy let go of me and staggered to his feet, arm wrapped around his middle. Crimson was spilling across his fingers. My sword hadn't missed him much.

"What loser's down there, running toward its doom?" he croaked, eyes gleaming even brighter. That annoying smile grew still.

I glared at him, confirming it was either his tunnel or mine. And at least mine was predictable.

Well. As predictable as things got down here.

"A wolf-man," I said. "He wants to eat me."

The boy snickered. "Scared?"

"Am not!"

"Are too, short stack."

"Don't call me short!" _Bianca said I was tall!_

He turned his gaze away and stood straighter, despite the cut in his side. "Well. Don't be. I'll protect you."

He didn't look like he could. Bianca told me not to trust strangers.

Plus, Percy had looked plenty capable…

"I'm not scared," I said, and turned to face the tunnel.

The cold reached us before the monster did, soaking deep into our bones. The fear that held us so still. It heralded the thing that came to eat us.

I felt sick. Hungry, thirsty, sick, tired, you name it. But for some reason, just like I had not been able to talk, my legs were no longer able to run.

The dog stopped not far from us, breathing in his slow, heavy pant.

"Two," he growled. "Two. Sit!"

"Sit!" my latest comrade mimicked. "Lie down! Play dead!"

The wolf-man growled and came forward. It wasn't until then that I noticed I was able to see, both the boy and the demon – the former was glowing. Literally.

The dog was an orangish color at its wolf-head, thick fur streaming down to its shoulders and chest where it then melded into skin. Beyond that, it was mostly human. The feet were kind of big and I swear I saw a tail, but for the most part, it was just a big human. The skin it did show between crude, salted pelts and its own wiry hairs was a slightly tanned hue. Mediterranean.

Every inch of it screamed _wrong._ Puppy dogs were supposed to be cute. I'd always found them scary, but not… not like this. This was, like, make-horror-movies-jealous scary.

No sooner had it glanced at us both did it lunge at me, springing to impossible heights from its massive paws and bearing down with a full set of wolf fangs.

Too big to just level my sword to its chest. Not when it came falling down like the television at the hotel.

Well. I'd never seen it fall, but Bianca had told me it would if I kept roughhousing near it.

I dropped to the ground, rolled to the side, and rushed to leap to my feet. Anything to avoid the teeth and claws.

I didn't make it there.

The dog was fast. Before it'd landed, its course had changed in the air, and those powerful hands and feet could send him barreling at me horizontally as easily as he'd gone straight up.

It was like being hit by a bus. That's the memory that surfaced; the one of Alice, the girl who'd spoken to me in Tulsa. The way the school bus had felt when she ran out into the street without looking both ways first.

Unlike that, though, the pain in my body didn't fade so quickly.

I couldn't see, couldn't breathe, but I could feel it on me. Claws raked up my arm and a horrifying _snap!_ went off next to my head as those wolf teeth clamped shut. Nails dug into my shoulder, dragged me upward into its reeking fur, and smashed me into the ground again.

I panicked. I kicked and screamed, sword forgotten. Something achingly cold started at my fingers and raced up to my elbows. I felt the jolt of the wolf-man as the magic shot through him, felt him flinch again, and again, until he was gone.

My lungs felt like they'd shriveled into raisins by that point. Then the dog vanished and I wheezed, choked, and wheezed some more.

After a moment, I could hear the sounds of the scuffle going on nearby.

"Stop!" the dog was yelling. "Stop! Not kill you! Not kill you!"

"I kill _you_!" the glowing boy taunted.

"Nooo! Nooo! I must prove myself to Tribe!"

"Your _tribe_? Ha! Sounds like some lame after-school club! You and your tribe aren't worthy of a badass like me!" the glowing kid laughed, as breathless as I was.

I scrambled to my elbows, then to my knees. The wolf and demigod had vanished down the tunnel. Only the latter's dim glow and their loud cacophony gave away their presence at all.

_Run!_ my mind screamed at catatonic legs. _Run! Run or die!_

But… it was my fight, and I'd wounded the demigod…

_Doesn't matter, _I thought. _I'm sure it's nothing a badass like him can't handle. Besides, it's not just my life I'm breathing for, and hers is worth more than anything._

Before I could move, though, the wolf screamed in pain. Lopsided footsteps came running back to me. The Labyrinth's patchwork stone and dirt walls seemed to ripple as a glow approached.

The footsteps slowed and stopped with a sickening thud, and were echoed by a harsh panting. Then a snarl and a scream.

It'd caught him.

I saw the wolf now, jaws locked hard on a luminescent ankle, nothing but hunger revealed by the reflection in its eyes. The demigod was thrashing and kicking at those eyes as hard as he could. But his eyes were on me.

There was a wolfish grin on his face that could rival that of his captor. The blood running down his lips and high-pitched, raspy voice didn't help. "Coward. Idiot. If it doesn't… die now, it'll come… for you later."

My stomach twisted at the sight of him crumpled on the floor. I picked up my sword and launched over him, into the surprised wolf.

It whined and batted me aside, and I rolled to my feet. Its outline was hard to track in this wan, one-sided tinge of light. But for the moment it was still.

"Food," it snarled. "No take Tribe food. You are _my _food."

But it did not move to attack. A moment later, it stumbled forward, swayed, and collapsed.

I gaped at it and the growing pool of liquid beneath. "Did you do that?"

"Yeah," my temporary comrade grimaced. "Pretty awesome, huh?"

The wolf still writhed, but its eyes were rolling around blindly and the movements were jerked like his limbs had gone mad. A sick gurgling sound emanated from his wide jaws and trailing tongue. Now and then it would lengthen into something with a bit of breath, but I had no doubt; the wound had been fatal.

I turned to look at the demigod. "Who are-"

_"Ahroooooo!"_

Behind me, the injured wolf gargled again. In the distance, more wolves echoed with their eerie howls.

_Tribe._

"They're more?!" I demanded, once more stopped from turning around to check.

The demigod, on his hands and knees now, glowered at me. "I warned you… not to go down… that tunnel."

I kicked the monster's blood off my boots and cursed – _I'm sorry, Sis, it slipped out, it won't happen again, just please don't make me put soap in my mouth it tastes like poisoned bile_ – before running back the way I'd come.

The maze groaned in a way I never had and never would mistake for welcoming.

"Hey!"

Guilt stopped me again, but I still couldn't turn around.

The demigod's body made a thick dragging sound as he struggled forward. "I see how it is! …You leave me to fight… and then ditch your brave savior?"

"Is the badass asking for help?" I said.

_Don't turn around don't turn around they'll get you-_

But the guilt I felt inside, like a fuzzy mold growing atop living organs-

I heard the smile return to his voice. "I'm asking… for payment. Else I'll… have to take it… from you by force. And I… don't like hurting helpless cowards. It's… not fair."

Down the tunnel, the howls were getting louder.

I squeezed my eyes shut, ran until the glow was warm on my eyelids, hauled him up by the shoulders, and together we fled to whatever the maze had so delicately prepared for us next.

oOo

The maze had every opportunity to trap, trick, tear, and erase us.

But it didn't.

We eventually collapsed in a small cavern. More like a pocket dug into the side of our current corridor – there was barely enough room for us and a fire, so long neither of us was so inclined to stand or sit up straight. Lining the dusty clay walls was a thick, grotesque web of tree roots. They reminded me of veins.

The glowing kid, who was not glowing anymore, crawled in and fell to the ground. He didn't move.

I slid in after him and, after making sure he was curled against the wall and not in any danger, lit a fire in the center of the shelter. The silent blue flames left me every opportunity to sit and listen.

_You're going to be so proud when I show you how patient I've become. I can sit here for hours on end, just listening. Not eating or dozing off or even getting distracted!_

I got distracted this time, though. The kid I'd dragged along was bleeding, and Connor and Travis had warned me that monsters were like dogs. They could find you by the scent of your blood.

My first-aid skills did not go above Neosporin and a Band-Aid (I could do those very, very well, I was proud to say; Sis had clapped and cheered for me when I'd finally done it right, not overdone the medicine and aimed the bandage expertly, even pulled it tight in that way only a true artist could), but I didn't have any of those, so I tied off his blue windbreaker as tightly as I could around his waist. Telltale red still seeped through, so I pulled it tighter, and that'd have to do the trick.

As I finished, I caught one open eye staring at me.

He said nothing as I finished my patient listening. For a moment I wondered if he would be proud, too, but decided it was silly; something told me he had never felt pride in anyone but himself for a long, long time.

After a while I noticed that he wasn't entirely passive, though. His hand was moving. It was a slow process broken periodically by a defeated stillness, but, little by little, his fingers found his pocket.

Beneath the captivating, lackadaisical choir of the maze, his breathing had become ragged. Whatever he was looking for in his pocket, he didn't reach.

I'd already made a bandage. And the maze required my attention. The walls were shifting out there. If I listened really close, I could hear the clicks and hisses of its smaller components, of its traps being fired and reset. Of the demons inside. The maze was always telling this infinite story.

Infinite. There'd always be a maze. And while sometimes I was really, really scared of this place and longed for my nightlight, that thought was comforting.

In an odd way, this maze was familiar.

I turned from it and emptied the pocket. There was a small knife, several candy wrappers (but no candy, I noticed with a rumbling stomach and a wistful reflection on my discarded sandwich), and a bag full of-

-Oh, dear gods. Bread pudding.

"This is what you were looking for, isn't it?" I asked, but the kid's eyes had closed once more.

I snorted and ate one square. It didn't taste like bread pudding, but it was warm and squishy and sweet. It seemed to unfurl in my mouth. I gasped as the colors of our pathetic shelter sharpened and the stabbing ache in my stomach faded.

It was medicine of some sort.

As I looked at it, and felt the starvation retreat at an alarming rate, I dimly recalled Connor and Travis telling me never to eat this unless necessary. And to never eat a lot.

"You got some nice loot," I told him, shoving the bag into my pocket. My mouth watered and my fingers trembled there; as around me, the maze groaned, I could still taste the sweet ambrosia and feel its warmth and, without trying too hard, could almost see Bianca next to me.

I tore it back out and stared at it, licking my lips. So hard to put it away. But I knew the benefits of saving food. Besides, I didn't want to be caught stealing it.

My gaze slid sideways nonchalantly at that just to be sure he wasn't looking. Of course he wasn't; he was sleeping soundly now, as the growing stain in the makeshift bandage promised.

I looked at the ambrosia, then at him.

What on earth was I doing?

"Hey. Hey," I said, shoving at his shoulder. "Don't… Look, I got your stuff. Here." I shoved a crumbling cube at his mouth. It squished between my fingers. But his lips moved and a dry, bashful tongue crawled forward.

I broke the ambrosia into smaller pieces and dropped them into his mouth one by one. They were small enough that he could slowly chew and, eventually, swallow heavily.

oOo

"Amateur."

I blinked, swiping vigorously at the crust over my eyes. My joints were so stiff I swear they made more noise than there usually was down here.

"Hm?" I asked, before remembering who the kid was. Kind of hard to forget, seeing as he was glowing and all.

I scowled. "Well. I guess you're not gonna die."

"Psh! We both would've, the way you fell asleep during watch!" he laughed. It wasn't a nice laugh. "Luckily it wasn't too long before I woke up and took over. I'd be happy to teach ya if you've got something worth my time."

_Your life, maybe? _I thought. But I didn't trust my faulty, traitorous tongue around most people, let alone this one.

He turned and poked at the edge of the blue flames. "With a fire going too, man. You need help."

"I usually do fine down here on my own," I finally burst.

He looked over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow, an expression that, had it belonged to Bianca, I would have deemed _my suicidal obituary._ "Really, now? How long have you been here?"

I counted on my fingers. "Um… Since before Christmas. I leave now and then. What day is it now?"

"I don't know," he said. "But it can't be that long, seeing as a helpless wannabe like you isn't dead."

"It's been a while. We're at least in January. I survived that long."

"Luck," he snorted.

I scowled, not in the mood to debate why the maze hadn't tricked me or what it might be planning in its seething act of passivity, and doused the fire with a snap of my fingers. He blinked at it in mild shock before composing himself again. "I… It's not luck!"

"Yes it is," he smirked, and pulled the pocketknife from his jeans.

"Is not!" I yelled. It wasn't just luck. It couldn't be. What about all it'd taken not to scream when the demon found me in the cave with the odd engravings? All the effort into not looking back? The fight with the dog?

Luck was part of it. But not all. _Luck _wasn't going to bring Bianca back to me.

_It can't be luck. Can't be._

_ …Is it?_

By all rights, the maze should have killed me by now. I already knew that. So what else could it be?

_I don't know. But not luck._

"Prove it," the kid said.

"Luck doesn't exist," I snarled triumphantly. _There. Beat that._

He raised an eyebrow, shrugged, and began to file his luminous nails.

I sighed and, carefully, peered outside our small cave. I was careful not to stick my head out – that was very bad, often resulted in decapitation – but managed to glance down the corridor both ways.

Hollow groans reached my ears.

"Nothing audible is nearby," I whispered. "If we want food, we'll have to leave now."

"You don't give your superior savior orders, mister."

I sighed and turned to look at him. "Alright. Fine. What do _you _think we should do?"

He stuck the knife between his teeth and flossed thoughtfully. After a moment he whipped the knife out and pointed its dripping tip at me rapturously. "First rule of the maze; communication. You know how to communicate with it, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well, you're gonna have to communicate with _me _if you expect me to help find your sorry butt food. And I suppose I'll be forced to communicate with you, too, if I want to receive my payment. So we need names."

"You can call me Minos," I said, and then felt a rush of pride at the fake name.

"Minos. Obviously farce, but alright. You'll need a respectful title for me, now… The way you've spoken to me already is almost unforgivable…" He pondered. "Aha! What was that song called? Mr. … Mr. Bombastic. That's what you'll call me, got it?"

"Whatever."

He raised an eyebrow again.

I sighed. "Yes, Mr. Bombastic."

"There ya go, kid. Second; follow my orders. Because I'm smart I'll give ya enough space to think on your own and confuse the maze, but you put one toe out of line, we're through, alright?"

"W… Yes, Mr. Bombastic."

"Third; if you die, I ain't going out of my way to tell anyone. So you better not have family expecting you. It's bad for my rep to go delivering bad news, anyway. Unless maybe you got a hot relative. Then I can comfort them."

I wasn't sure how to answer that.

_What are you thinking?!_

"I have a sister," I rushed. "But… but if I die, I guess you won't have to break it to her. And, uh… no comforting her."

"Alright. Fourth-"

"Mr. Bombastic, we're wasting time. I'm hungry."

He sighed heavily. "Fourth; no whining. I can't stand all the complaining. You bring everything onto yourself, right? So you can't say nothing about it. Your fault entirely. If you die and I live, or if I get to the food first, it's not because I'm a jerk. It's because you screwed up. I ain't playing no dirty blame-game."

I glared at him.

"Fine, fine! We'll go! Just remember why you can't keep up with all this later," he rolled his eyes. I glanced around the corridor once more and crawled out.

Groans to the right. A slow, periodic clicking to the left. It was accompanied by a dragging noise. It sounded ages and ages away, the way the echo had become lazy and the sound bled around itself, but here that didn't mean much.

I waited for Mr. Bombastic to crawl out before standing, but for whatever reason, the glow that marked him did not move.

"You coming?" I asked.

A barked laugh. "Ha! Falling asleep on watch, whiney, disrespectful, impatient… You got quite the list there, kid."

"Minos," I corrected, but crawled back into the cavern anyway.

He was at the threshold, bent low beneath the twining roots above. He was staring at the floor as if it might decide to drop away and leave him to fall to Tartarus.

"…What?" I asked before I noted the hand wrapped around his torso. Blood was leaking through his fingers.

He sat there breathing heavily for five minutes. Then he swallowed. "I really, really hate that pesky sword of yours."

"How bad?" I inquired, automatically reaching for the pocket I knew held the bread-pudding-medicine-things. "Did it just reopen, or…?"

"Wasn't healed enough to move," he gasped. "Deep. I'll… I'll be fine. Mr. Bombastic, remember?"

"That's a nickname."

"That's the beauty of it, stupid. A nickname suits you best 'cause you pick it based off of you, not like your real name. Your real name was necessary but all in all a failed investment. I left mine behind a while ago. If I were you, I'd stick with Minos."

The words were rushed, and quiet. He was falling against the wall as he finished. Not the thing I'd have been talking about at the moment, but I'd registered long before that this was an idiot.

An idiot that would get me killed and that I was really getting sick of, I added as my stomach growled.

Remorse washed over me at that. "…So…"

He smiled as if amused. "You ain't finding this cave again no matter how hard ya try, kid. You sure you've been down here so long?"

I ignored him and looked outside. Two tunnels still, going in opposite directions with no turnoffs as far as I could see. Which meant there were probably several just waiting to appear.

One might think a maze would be impatient. It's not.

"You can go," Mr. Bombastic said.

I nearly jumped and turned to stare at him. "…Go?"

"Yeah. Go. You look like you need permission, and I'm in a gracious mood. Besides, it's really nasty to watch someone starve to death. It's so pitiful."

_You look kinda pitiful, too, Mr. Bombastic._ But I didn't speak. You don't talk back to adults when they're being nice, and he was the closest thing to an adult I had. Either way he could react like one; take away all games and fun and in this case food with one word – _grounded._

Or _guilt._

I stared at him for a moment more, then back out at the tunnels. A third option had opened.

_I can't starve to death. Bianca's waiting on me._

I bolted out before the new, optimal option was closed.

oOo

The world was so alien.

The quiet, familiar, thoughtful sighs of the maze had been replaced by a mindless scream made of cars and chatter and dozens of other things I couldn't name. Scary things. Bianca had always told me to be cautious but not afraid, even in big cities with big people and big things and big buildings and big dogs and big everything.

Big things weren't as scary as they once were, but they were still scary.

But there was no Bianca now to hold my hand so I quietly held my own, arms held before me, and slid around big people and big buildings and big cars in search of food. Luckily, the food in cities is big, too.

My first provider was a hotdog stand not a block from the street drain that led back down into the maze. Big foods have big smells, of course.

My tongue was drowning when it came into view and as I watched. My fingers twitched, despite how Bianca had taught me to quietly hold her – or in this case, my – hand and stop them from being so impatient. My stomach made a noise that rivaled the city.

The woman manning the stand smiled down at me. "May I help you?"

She was a stranger, and I was one to her, so I didn't say anything. It might've scared her.

Her smile went away, hiding like my eyes wanted to from the blaring sunlight (the maze was never bright). "Do you have parents? Where are your mommy and daddy?"

Minos had said my daddy was in LA. I dimly wondered if she could explain where LA was. I knew it stood for Los Angeles, and that it was in California, but I didn't know anything about either of those.

The woman sighed, removed her red baseball cap topped with a fake hotdog, and undid her ponytail. She leaned over the stand with her chin on her palms. "So. I'm gonna have to guess. Like a game. How many guesses do I get?"

I considered. I'd have liked to stay. The air was nice and that maze… That maze…

It scared me more than the city did. I wouldn't go back, I decided. But just because I was staying above ground didn't mean I wasn't staying here.

_Above ground this time, I'll be sure of it. I'm never going down there again. Where the rocks are creepy and the monsters are so smart._

I glanced at the hot dogs she had.

She lifted one. "This is what you want?"

I nodded.

"I can't give it to you. I'd like to, but there's this pesky thing called _making a living._ Gotta go to college to make a good living, and gotta do this to get into college. But I'll tell you what; if you tell me where your parents are, I can return you to them. And once you're with them they can buy you a hot dog. Maybe I'll even throw in a discount. …You look like your family might need it."

I knew what came next. I was supposed to point around the corner, so she'd go. And while she was gone and the people with dead eyes who wouldn't notice kept walking by I was to commit my sin, my justified sin.

But Bianca had warned me that it was dangerous to not hold a hand in the city. I could get lost. I stood there, still holding my own hand, wondering how I could point without letting it go.

Only for a moment, though. I'd taken bigger risks for her.

I let go of my hand and pointed around the corner.

The lady squinted down the street. "…Okay. I'll lock up and walk you back. I'm sure they're worried."

This was not a problem. As she reached for my hand, I recalled the memory of the dog-headed man, and screamed like I hadn't been able to then.

The dead-eyed people did not care.

The girl did. She flinched back, but her brow scrunched up as if she were annoyed. "Easy. Sorry. I just want to hold your hand, okay? So you don't get lost again?"

I quickly held my own hand again and shook my head. At last, she said something to me in a huff of a sigh and stormed off towards the place I'd pointed.

_Take just what you need,_ I told myself. Bianca had said the same when she'd stolen money from the man in the striped suit. She knew it was wrong, I knew it was wrong, but so long we had one another we had reason to live. And it justified enough.

I didn't realize how much I was taking until several meat sticks were stuffed into my jacket pockets. There was no way this made sense. I didn't need quite this much. Besides, if I saved it like I knew I should, most of it would go bad…

But I could not resist taking more. I was out of there before the lady showed up again.

oOo

My next targets were basic, everyday stores. Not the small, homey businesses.

Harder to steal from, yes. But it's the stores that show up everywhere, like Wal-Mart and Target and the one that had the leaf on the logo, that sell the _food _that's everywhere, like Pop-Tarts and boxed cereal.

And do you know how long it takes for a Pop-Tart to go bad?

I don't know. But it's a long time, because I steal them all the time. They always lasted the longest, of all the things in my supply.

So after hitting up a Wal-Mart and a small Target and an Aldi, my jacket was getting full. It was quite a lot to steal, especially if I wasn't entering the maze again, but my mind was on auto-pilot so that my conscious could focus more on making sure I didn't get caught. I was sure I'd discover the reason I'd taken so much later.

I was double-checking the aisles on my way out – the bread section, which was a shame, because bread was bread just about everywhere and no good to me – when two people wearing different uniforms approached the front door.

Of course, it could be a number of situations. But it was a red flag. One wore an Aldi uniform. Another a black policeman's outfit.

Again, could be anyone they were after. But chances are not something I would take with Sis on the line.

I turned and cursed myself for making my last stop one that only had two entrances. I tightened my jacket and walked as calmly as I could. Like everything was normal.

Like I had when the demons followed me.

Unfortunately, someone very familiar was waiting down the aisle.

"Thought I'd find you here," the hotdog vending lady said. She did not smile at me this time.

Time to improvise.

"Don't touch that!" I screamed, and scrambled backwards. "Don't touch me! Mom! MOM!"

The words felt like hunger in my mouth. Hollow and adorned with poisoned thorns, with the worst kind of pain. But I screamed them.

"MOM! MOM!"

"Hey – hey! Thief! Over here!" the lady yelled, waving her hands. "He's over here!"

"Stop it!" I howled, and finally managed to scramble away from her. I squeezed my jacket tight and flew down the aisles.

My yells stopped. The ruse was done, and my heart was not in for the pointless at the moment. Back to holding every sound in, back to running, back to finding a way out.

The policeman skidded into my aisle, an aisle so much like a maze's corridor, expertly avoiding a mess of refried beans and chili cans.

Nope! Other way!

_Great idea, genius. You finally caught onto the basics. Looks like I'm rubbing off on ya, _I could imagine Mr. Bombastic sneer.

I was cornered now between the Aldi cashier and the cop. Too late to turn around. Instead, I charged for the wall of chips.

_Had to be chips. Couldn't be, like, cans or boxes. Something that wouldn't be crushed._

My climbing was not the fastest in the world, and I lost a box of Pop-Tarts from my jacket, but with some fast footwork I avoided the Aldi woman's grasp. The policeman leapt like a fully-trained chimp onto the shelves beside me.

I yelped and leapt off, sailing over the Aldi woman and into the corridor, which was now open.

_Back entrance. Docking ramp. Bound to be guarded, but if I can be fast… The back is closer, anyway…_

No! The deli kitchen! It had a side door!

I charged the glass display of mouth-watering meats and leapt over the top, hands planted on the tall surface and nearly knocking the surprised employee flat. And then almost landing in the meat slicer.

_This city has more traps than the maze!_ Later, I would scold myself for that exaggeration.

And then the only thing between me and the freedom of the city's winding, labyrinthine streets was the hotdog woman again. This time she looked like she was carved of stone.

She reached out to grab me. I was moving too fast to stop.

Instinct, life-saving instinct, kicked in. I ducked and used the disastrous momentum to slam into her legs. One hand snapped out behind me and grabbed her arm as she fell. I leaned back and swung us around in a circle, which slammed her head hard into the metal doorframe. It snapped back with a sickening sound and she gasped. Her hands locked onto my wrist.

_"Stop it,"_ I said, and it was because I meant it this time. I know I hadn't used my voice in a while, but it was much lower, much colder than I remembered. And much calmer than I felt.

I kicked her off, as hard as I could. Her ribs certainly did not feel like stone. At last, she gasped and let go, slapping onto the tile floor.

Quite suddenly, I felt sick. But I couldn't stay and make it right.

"I'm sorry!" I yelled as I ran into the streets. I lost myself in the glazed zombies they called healthy, happy, living people and once I was far enough away from the exit, began to walk like them.

Two blocks away, my heart was still pounding, and with every calm step, it felt like I was still running. Someone had noticed my escape.

When I dared to look back, though, it was not one of my previous pursuers. They were either injured or caring for said injured. It was the cook I had nearly kicked; he was following me with a mimicked glazed look. Two other store employees flanked him.

Something told me they were not coming to avenge the toppled meat slicer.

Just as they were close enough that I could see their pale dog eyes, I bolted. Disguises were wasted on them. Behind me, three howls made seemed to make the sky and buildings shatter.

More echoed from around us. All around us. Footsteps that ran heavy and fast stood out like drums among a room of singing Deaf.

I shoved around the scary zoned-out people and ran, and I didn't even have to hold my hand. Too slow. The thick stream was too slow.

I felt hot breath on my neck.

My hands tightened on my jacket. The edge to one of my Mythomagic decks bit into my thumb.

I ran.

The city was loud and tall and scary, but little by little, I got ahead. I did not stop running. Nothing was worth the price of stopping. Nothing was worth any chance I had at seeing her again.

And so I took no chance and I ran like mad.

I was ten minutes into the maze and mentally preparing myself for its familiar, intriguing games by the time I remembered I had sworn the place off entirely.

oOo

I was suspicious when the small tunnel ran straight into a familiar corridor of dirt and grainy stones.

No way. Too similar to the way I'd left it. The way time went in the maze… Well, I was almost sure it moved slower here than on the surface, but it shouldn't be like this. It should have moved already. It'd had plenty of time by any standards.

I could already hear it groan and hiss and creak as it came to get me. As it delivered its next horrors. The familiar terror crawled up my throat.

Why had I come down here again?

Whatever the reason, leaving it was not an option. I was positive that if I turned around, the exit would be gone. Just as Mr. Bombastic's cave would not show up if I walked towards where I'd seen it.

But even from the intersection, I could see his glow coming from inside the small enclave.

"No way," I breathed, and thought, _maybe it is luck_, and ran for it before the maze could snatch him away.

It was a traitorous thought, though. Of course it wasn't luck.

I was greeted with a ferocious battle cry and a fierce tackle.

"Hi-yah!" he screamed. "You can't sneak up on-"

"It's me!" I yelled as my jacket's teeming contents were scattered. "Just me! Minos!"

He scowled and ripped my sword from its scabbard. "Like I'd believe it for a second. Tell me; if I cut your head off, will it grow back, or might you disintegrate and leave a prize at least half worth my efforts?"

"You wouldn't have to cut my head off," I said. "That metal is Stygian iron. It's why the wounds in your stomach are worse than they look. Which is why you shouldn't be jumping around like an idiot." To prove my point, I lightly prodded his naval.

He gasped and stumbled off me, but left the sword. I took it gratefully.

"How long was I gone?" I asked as I gathered the food.

"Hours. Long enough for me to have another ambrosia cube. You're lucky," he smiled as he took a Pop-Tart box for himself. "Do you know how much mental control it takes to command this maze?"

"You didn't make this cavern stay," I protested as I handed him a hot dog. "That's impossible. Nobody controls the maze." Except maybe the real Minos.

He snorted. "_I _can. You wouldn't understand."

Right. I'd momentarily forgotten who I'd come back to.

_Why did I come back here, again?_ This jerk's stupidity was going to get me killed whether I owed him or not.

There wasn't even any shock when I realized that all the extra food I'd taken had been intended for him from the start.

He grinned and happily dug into his hot dog. A pleased expression blessed his dimly shining face.

I didn't trust him.

I never had, but now I was honestly beginning to worry. Fear was creeping up my spine at the thought that I could read his facial expressions so well. That meant he might be able to read mine. And having someone read you was dangerous.

The maze, for example.

That was the real reason. The maze was patient, but it never stopped working. Oh, no. It still intended to eat me. I knew that well.

The question wasn't why I'd come back. It was why the maze had let me.

_What trap are you planning? Is this even remotely entertaining to you?_

"Chill," Mr. Bombastic said through a full mouth. "Don't worry about it, I kept the fort while you were gone. Nothing's ever snuck up on me before and nothing ever will."

Ugh. He was not helping me much.

I looked him up and down cautiously as we ate our miniature feast and packed what we didn't devour. There was fresh blood on him but he could at least sit up and move around a bit on his own. And I'd fed him. That was an enormous thing, I knew, whether he'd accept that or not. Surely it was safe for me to leave him now.

A hard ball of some emotion struck me at that thought. I had no name for that emotion. I didn't know if it was good or bad, dread or anxiety, fear or wonder.

Mr. Bombastic, during my thoughts-

-_Darnit! I was pushing our luck farther and farther, why couldn't I control my mind, the maze was reading me at every moment of every day, without rest, without escape-_

-had poked two holes in his artificial pastry and was using it as a mask. After a moment, he shoved in a new space for his tongue, too, and goggled at me through his new creation.

"I see you," he grinned.

I sighed. "And I could see you from a mile away. Why do you do that?"

"Do what?" he asked, biting into his mask.

"Glow."

Suddenly he wasn't smiling. "What's wrong with glowing?"

"Nothing, it's just-"

_"Shut up."_

There was an urgency there that dismissed our conversation. Instinctively I hit the dirt and drew my sword. Mr. Bombastic quit chewing and cocked his head to one side.

The ambient noise of the maze, as I'd been subconsciously monitoring, had not changed. Today there were gentle clatters and low, drawn-out hisses.

I stared at him, willing him to speak.

He set down his food and leaned against the wall. His face was grim as his ear picked up more of whatever had alarmed him through the dirt and roots. Or perhaps he was worried the maze was faking it.

No. It was not faking it.

_Not the most elaborate trap, I thought_. It was still toying with us.

But it was not faking this new threat.

Mr. Bombastic tapped the floor twice. Paused. Twice again. Pause. Once.

_Can you stand?_ I mouthed. I didn't like the answer his face gave me.

For a moment, I didn't really care that he was most likely a hindrance in a game I was, of course, always so close to losing. He was close to losing, too.

And a ghost had once told me that Laelaps was not buff and strong but a thin, desperate dog.

From down the corridor, a chorus of dog-like yips came barreling back and forth along the walls. By the time it reached us it was like clapping thunder.

I closed my eyes and curled up beside the ashes of the fire, feeling the hard-packed dirt beneath me. The dogs' cries faded. Mr. Bombastic's questioning poke was miles and miles away.

The maze's groans slowly grew louder. Until they were battle cries.

It's hard to say exactly what belonged to the maze and what belonged to the ghosts. They were much one and the same, seeing as the maze claimed ownership over the ones who'd never found their ways home. And as time marched on the sounds began to blend into one another. They became something timeless in turn.

There were clicks. Hisses. Crooning noises.

Oh, yes. There were a few close enough.

"I knew there was something I liked about this cavern," I whispered as I got up off the ground. Outside, the dogs had found our corridor. Their howls were excited and loud enough that I could feel them vibrate across my blade as I gripped the hilt.

Mr. Bombastic had joined me next to the entrance. His form was glowing much brighter now. The light had leaked into his eyes, and they'd become hellish pools of a mythical obstinacy.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I recalled a cartoon that portrayed radiation with a similar glow.

I shoved my sword through the ashes and into the dirt.

"There are three nearby; two to our left and one beneath us," I said. "Try not to hit them, please. It kinda hurts and I don't have that kind of Band-Aid."

He looked at me like I was insane. "Three what?"

It wasn't until then that I remembered I was afraid of my magic, and even so, it felt like a memory; not something I'd ever truly feel now or later.

A surge of aching, refreshing cold shot up my body as a full set of phalanges burst from the dirt.

Mr. Bombastic said nothing.

Outside, every noise stopped.

My comrade's eyes widened and, ever so slowly, as if he were holding in his own screams as I had done countless times, lowered himself to the floor. Terror swam in his glowing, suddenly not-so-determined eyes.

The skeletal hand felt around blindly. I gently guided the fingers to the hilt of my sword. Dirt rumbled as it approached.

Outside, something growled and snarled. "You. Come out."

"Come and get us!" Mr. Bombastic taunted with a brave voice. I kinda envied it.

The growl deepened and the dog-man lowered his canine head to the cave entrance. Saliva as thick as snowplow drifts lined his lips. "Come unharmed to Tribe home. We will harm you there."

He didn't look like he had the patience.

Mr. Bombastic glowed brighter to hide me and my emerging friend behind the light. "I'd like to see you try. I'll give you a bone if you succeed. Good dog! Good dog! Wanna bone? SIT!"

The dog snarled and tore the entrance apart as he pounced.

"BAD DOG! BAD DOG! I TRAINED YOU BETTER!" Mr. Bombastic screeched, pocketknife drawn out of nowhere. I felt the dog's clawed fingers graze my jacket as I leapt aside. The demon crashed into my sword and the skeleton. A chorus of startled whines burst from its throat.

"Gah!" I yelled as its flailing back paws tore a chunk out of my cheek. The demon was writhing wildly now. My world had been reduced to darkness and flashes, darkness and flashes and hard, unpredictable projectiles.

"Get out! Get out!" Mr. Bombastic was ordering from somewhere beyond the thrashing monster. It was his light that I was seeing.

I wasn't sure if it was my sword or his knife that did it, but the next blow to land on me was soft and broken. The panicked, meaty hand burst into golden ash that looked as if it were alight in Mr. Bombastic's harsh shine.

The whole cave, now, blinding.

I squeezed my eyes shut. My hands, blind, fumbled for my sword. My fingers collided with something hard and dry.

Outside, the other dogs were barking and howling and scratching at the walls.

I followed the skeleton's arm with my fingers. Sure enough, curled in its dirty fingers, I found the hilt of my sword. Our new ally clacked her jaw happily and vanished form the cave's small space.

The light, slowly, was dying.

"Come on! Out!" Mr. Bombastic practically screeched. A new, very much alive hand grabbed my collar and shoved me towards the exit. My adjusting eyes made out his piercing ones.

And then we were out, out where the maze's laughingly gentle breezes were free to explore the open corridors and the sounds were given the right to echo impossibly. Out on the game board once more.

There were five of them left, the dogs. Occupied with two skeletons, yes, but still there. The first one caught sight of us tumbling free and shoved aside my allies-

(allies, they were always scary but they were scared of me too and so we were nice to one another and I didn't know if that made us allies but it made us more than what I'd call myself and most other people)

-against the wall, shattering a few ribs, as if they were nothing, and charged straight for us.

"No!"I yelled, and the skeleton in our cave shot out like a bullet. Next to me, Mr. Bombastic gave a strangled scream.

I shoved him aside, sword still drawn, and charged, too.

I was still scared. But my legs were doing that thing again, like my mouth had done. They weren't something I really could control now.

_Is this what you called bravery, Sis?_

The skeleton fell behind me as the dog reached us. It took a harsh swipe with clawed arm without even stopping. Somehow, though, that wasn't surprising. I was already diving hard to the left. The five weapons passed overhead harmlessly.

I forget the names of all the ghosts that taught me how to use my sword. I can name their favorite colors, though. And I can tell you that they were good at it. I hadn't been, not until I learned how to apply it all to the maze. The maze required... something faster, something better.

My sword swiped hard at the demon as I passed. It didn't even hurt my hand that time. My legs and my racing heart didn't let me check to be sure it was dead - I charged right on to the next two.

One skidded to a halt and howled, scratching at its face, as a piercing light sliced at its eyes. The other leaned down and pounced from below.

I cursed and narrowly dodged losing my foot as I used his head as leverage. I didn't have time to turn or move anywhere else. The dog crashed into a wall and there a skeleton took care of it. I whirled around for the next. It was still reeling from the light; I feigned for its head and swiped at its chest and then moved on fast because I really was hoping they were dying and I didn't want to find out that they weren't.

"Duck!" Mr. Bombastic barked. The order injected a burst of confusion through my mind - _why?_

But I did, just in case. I was too slow. Something clipped me in the back of the head as I did. If I wasn't moving so fast my balance would have been skewered. As it was, I swerved to that side and skidded to a halt.

The one behind me howled. I don't know what happened to it, because my halt had come right before the last dog, a hulking thing with five feet on me and hands big enough I could suffocate in his palm while his nails drove the fingers clean through my neck. I hardly saw the hulk of mangy fur in the sickly light before something crushed me against the grainy wall, hard enough that my own teeth clattered to match the skeletons'. Air withdrew from my lungs, leaving them with a painful sting. I didn't get the chance to relieve it.

The large, bulky claws of a dog closed in on my throat.

_No! No no no Bianca I'm so scared don't lose hope yet I'll come for you but help me please I'm so scared-_

My throat convulsed only to hurt worse. The fingers that'd been so impatient earlier were ravenous now. I ripped at the furry hand until my hands and arms hurt. My palms bled. It wasn't until then that I realized I'd lost my sword.

Around us, the maze still groaned and creaked. The shadows cast by Mr. Bombastic were wild again, jumping and living and thriving.

Hot wind brushed my face. "You've killed Tribe. Tribe-killer. Tribe-killer dies here."

And then suddenly I wasn't so scared.

I still felt fear. But now I felt hate, too. And that made it manageable.

My voice didn't work when I told him to stop. But something else did. I felt it as if I might feel my arm as it sliced through his shoulders and severed the spine, bone cracking and splitting like butter. The dog froze but his hand was limp, powerless. I slid to the rough ground and coughed. For a moment, that's all I was aware of - the ground and the harsh things in my lungs. And the cool, pleasant black mist curling on my fingers.

The wolf-man swayed and slowly toppled. The last surviving one - one I'd failed to kill or perhaps marked preoccupied - was cornered by skeletons.

Already, my legs were moving. Together we ran. was leaning heavily against a wall and motioning for me to hurry.

I stopped and whirled to face the skeletons. When I looked, for a moment, my gaze was also forced to the remaining monster - the single, overpowering objective to watch its blood soak this parched maze in spite and anger and a whole lot else made my whole body shake.

"Uh, bye!" I yelled instead. The skeletons crumbled to bones and sank into the maze themselves.

With them went the edge of my ambitions. The maze seemed to growl hungrily as it tasted their marrow. With the wolves gone, I could truly focus on it again - its cold, pulsing walls and the creaks off somewhere to the right and the hollow growls of other monsters not far from here.

The last wolf blinked blood from its eyes, saw us, and bared its fangs.

"Time to go!" Mr. Bombastic spat. _"Now!"_

I grabbed him and we limped as fast as we could down the malevolent corridor.

oOo

The maze decided it was at last time for a good hunt.

Howls chased us through tunnels and hallways and side passages and down into slides and sometimes up chutes and across rooms and once we even ran into a dead end, turned around, hit another dead end, turned around and were led in a totally different direction than before to hit another dead end, and so on, until the dog-man was snarling and bleeding and slicing the walls around us to ribbons and a side crawling space opened.

We lost the dog for a while there. But its howls still followed us, so we kept going.

It almost felt good, to feel death on our heels. To know at any moment the floor could fall away beneath us. Or that we might slam into a particularly stubborn wall. Or that acid may begin to fall from the ceiling. To know, wholly and irrevocably, that we were moments from losing the game.

It was familiar. It was what the maze always did.

And so for the next hours, it and us constantly tricked one another. I kept control of my thoughts so that it never saw Bianca and it insisted on surprising us and I had to keep control of my feet, too, and be nimble. Mr. Bombastic had to keep pace. Not once did he complain about any sort of pain. We played for our lives and the maze for...

Well. I have no clue what the maze played for, and I don't ever want to know.

Once, we ran across a snake-like demon. Mr. Bombastic pointed at her and she burst into dozens of flaming fragments, and we kept going.

For thirty minutes straight not long after that, we heard and saw nothing. Aside from that weird axe thing that swung down at us, but I saw it and dragged us out of the way in time.

Just as the mere thought of slowing down crossed my mind, something with a lot of waving, pulsating limbs (that's all it was, I think; there was no thickness or hulk of a body, merely a place where limbs could converge if they wished) came flailing and charging up the walls from behind us.

I laughed at my mistake and we booked it.

oOo

Our resting place was a room of pillars. They didn't reach the roof. Must have once been for decoration, or represented an open-air pavilion like the dining area at Camp where I'd met my first goddess. A place that the maze had wanted as much as it wanted us now and so it'd been taken and here it had laid in the patient maze until it was forgotten.

Not forgotten now. Now we were grateful for it. It was large enough that, if we sat in the middle, we'd have plenty of warning if a demon came in. Assuming they came from the walls, of course, and that was a huge assumption. But no place is perfect.

"How bad?" I asked even as we sat down.

Mr. Bombastic waved me off and swallowed some more of his dessert-medicine before answering. "I'm fine. Well enough to move."

I sighed roughly and plopped down onto my back. "Ugh."

Overhead, soaring above the tops of the pillars, the ceiling the maze provided encased crystals. As if molasses had moved in slow, contently lapping waves across the stars and left just barely a glimmer in place of each. You couldn't see the object, but you sure could see it shine.

What beauty you found in the maze, you either were stupid enough to carve for yourself, or it kept well-hidden. Ceilings were a good place to hide things.

Not yourself, of course, the maze would never permit that. I'd tried already.

"Not too bad, kid," Mr. Bombastic eventually said. "I knew I'd be able to shape you into something worthwhile. Just took a little effort."

"Not too bad yourself. I kinda like the light," I admitted. "It kills night vision but honestly I'm just glad for any sort of change. One that we control, not the maze."

I could hear the smile in his voice. "Why do you think I do it, moron?"

"Minos," I corrected.

"Whatever. Close enough."

We shared a laugh there. It wasn't so bad, wasn't so scary, wasn't like the laughs I'd heard from kids at Camp.

It almost made me sad that we'd be parting ways soon. Because the fact that we were sharing laughs meant that we'd spent way too long together. The more people, I had come to realize pretty quick, the easier it was to be distracted.

And it only takes a moment of distraction for the maze to claim you.

We sat up and I produced another box of Pop-Tarts. We ate in patient, guarded silence, every nerve honed in to the maze's mood.

Though I could not help but wonder, once again, why I wasn't dead.

_There's got to be something else out there_, I decided.

But our meal was in complete peace.

Afterwards, we sat over the open box of leftovers and continued to listen. It took a long while to convince us that the maze was truly done for the moment, that we had earned at least a few minutes.

Mr. Bombastic eyed the box and lunged for it like a snake.

"Hey!" I protested, but I was too slow. He'd already hidden it in his bloodied jacket. "Those were mine! You have your share!"

Mr. Bombastic smiled. "Yeah, but I want it more. So it should be mine."

"It's my last box," I snarled. "How do you know_ I_ don't want it more?"

"Well, I wanted it enough to get it first, didn't I?"

I was so mad that he'd take more than I'd already given, but I honestly had no answer. Eventually I just spat, "Who says you get it just 'cause you want it more, huh?"

He laughed at me as if I were a child who was begging to stay up late.

I snorted and looked away. "Geez. I don't even know why I came back after stealing all that food. We're just hindrances to one another, and you're a jerk. I _shouldn't _have come back."

"Easy. You longed for some more of my gracious company. Even if the maze forbids it," he winked. "I'm like that."

Oh, good gods. Time to go. I stood and began playing the now-familiar game of choosing a corridor.

"…Or," he continued to muse softly, "you were mistaken and thought I still needed your help."

I glared over my shoulder. "Mistaken?"

"Hm. You were wrong but I wouldn't call it a mistake to come back for me, or to not let me die regardless how much good you actually did. Nobody's that heartless."

"Except the maze," I said quietly, not sure if I would agree but not wanting to let his kindness go unappreciated.

See, maybe that's why he was so obnoxious. Nobody ever told him how much they liked the kinder side of him.

A certain amount of pride swelled through me as I realized it sounded like something Bianca would say.

Mr. Bombastic chuckled. "Yeah. Except the maze."

There was another thing Bianca used to say. _Speak of the devil, and he shall appear._

From the corridor I had decided to take, a low, unearthly rumble could be heard.

Mr. Bombastic stood and his hands attacked his pockets only to come up fruitless. His knife had been left behind somewhere.

I tried very hard not to let my heart sink, not to let the maze know it had succeeded in tricking us at last. I tightened my hand on my sword instead and thought about Sis, about how I still had to find her.

And that despite the trap, we weren't dead just yet.

"Go."

I jumped, but it was Mr. Bombastic who'd spoken. "…What?"

"Go. Run. Leave. Thin out our scent. I'll hold it off."

My mind still wasn't processing. "You… want me to leave?"

"_Yes,_ moron. It's because we're together that they find us so easily. What did I tell you about following orders? Get!"

I took two tentative steps back, caught between wondering if this was the maze's trick, if my escape was just a slick slope leading into an ambush, and confused as I could be. "…No payment for saving me?"

Where had the selflessness come from?

"I said _get_!" he barked.

"Will you be alright?" I demanded.

He laughed again, that harsh, sharp-edged, tooth-displaying cackle. "Of course! I've played with this maze for years. I'm not as helpless as you are. Go. And remember who saved your sorry butt again!"

It clicked then, why he was so determined to stand alone. It was so like him that I smiled, waved, and left without another word.

Because he was bent on being an idiot, and who was I to stop him from salvaging what he could of his ego after all the time we'd depended on one another?

And some part of me said that he'd be fine, anyway, especially if it was that ego on the line. That demon would probably take one look at his glowing, hellhound-sized head and run away screaming.

"Oh!" he called. "If you see a blonde guy and a bunch of demons recruiting demigods for 'a cause,' don't let 'em catch you! Their cause isn't as worthy as mine!"

oOo

It was good to have my night vision back.

It was good to worry about my own mind games and no one else's.

It was good to hear my own footsteps echoing off the jeering creaks of the maze and no one else's. To know that I was in total control of my side of the game board once more.

Not that my share of the board was of any impressive size. But it was mine.

It was even good to miss Bianca again. I had plenty to fear of the maze seeing and hearing and feeling every moment of it, but at least I didn't have to worry about the maze abandoning me for it. I was free to hurt over every little thought, and I would never be judged.

I was free to remind myself why I hadn't let the stupid maze have what it wanted.

But I wasn't free to cry or scream. So I didn't do those things. I just resumed business as normal.

When I was on the lookout for food, I thought of different options.

Father… Searching for him in dreams have proved fruitless. If I wanted to bargain with him, I'd have to get to him. And that meant traveling to LA.

The maze certainly wasn't going to take me there.

The real question, I supposed, was what actions to take when I got there. This was not something one just knew. It wasn't routine. It wasn't like getting up and brushing teeth and trying to convince your sister you brushed your hair and getting dressed and eating breakfast. You had to think, plan, engage yourself wholly into thought and effort.

Gods. Just the thought of _seeing _her again, let alone having her back…

That was all the city ever offered me. Food and thought. Sweet, lethally toxic thoughts.

I came across the standing demon again. The one that followed me without moving. There were no words for the fear that sprang up when I caught sight of it down a particularly wide tunnel of leveled concrete.

It had never really stopped following me, I eventually figured. It'd just fallen behind. But it wouldn't give up. It wouldn't get bored.

It would have me eventually, like the maze.

But not once did I feel that I was on the edge of panic.

As before, I made sure not to look, and kept walking calmly. By the time I next turned around I was in a narrow shaft of untamed dirt and crystal and the monster was gone.

oOo

Five days later?

_ Great gods I know I'm always so close to losing I know I never have a right to hope and much less to pray but please, please don't let it end. I haven't found her yet. I still don't know what to offer Father. I'll offer myself if I have to but please please please I can't do it if I don't get there alive so please if there's anyone who's interested let me last just a little longer hold back the maze just long enough please maybe you the nice little girl I met at Camp your name was Hestia if you ever were to offer me help, ever offer it to Bianca, now would be the time, just please I can't stand to lose Sis again-_

Five days later I learned that prayers can't pass through the Labyrinth's walls. Like ghosts, they are trapped in the malicious and sordid corridors.

I didn't even have a name for the thing chasing me now. All I knew was that it had allies. A whole pack of them, rushing over one another and _click-clack_ing on the concrete walls and floor and even the roof. Or maybe they'd all smelled the blood from the wound I'd gotten the day before and were racing for dinner.

_Thump thump thump_ went my feet as the environment morphed into dirt.

_Padpadpadpadpadpadpadpadpadpadpadpadpadpadpadpadpadpad_ went the demons.

They were like cockroaches. Massive, buggy-sized cockroaches with human faces smeared and splattered across the heads. Lots of them hissed as we raced.

I cursed myself for not engaging earlier. Apparently, politely walking away was not always the best move. It'd only allowed for more and more to arrive, and now I didn't stand a prayer of winning a fight. Not without something going very wrong. There was a sinking feeling in my bones to attest to that.

A deeper one whispered that I had no chance of escape, either.

The maze's shadows shifted and grew and darkened as we wound our way deeper. The groans and cries of its devoid links had grown frequent and desperate as it moved into play for the endgame. Every so many thumps but never the same number twice it would cry out, a wailing, horrifying noise.

Its battle cry.

I kept running, though, in hopes I might fall through a hole or a wall would slam shut. Anything. Maybe I'd happen by an entrance. Maybe it was another trick. So many stupid, stupid thoughts.

But I wasn't going to die yet. Not without her. I was too...

_I am not scared. I'm brave._

From up ahead, a rattling howl came barreling through the corridor.

_Oh, de Immortalis! I said **please!** What more do you want?_

My life, body, and soul, apparently. A slight of big, bulky paw told me the approaching canine was pouncing. I ducked and dashed as fast as I could. A hot, reeking, massive force shot by overhead. I rolled the landing to avoid it.

Necessary, but a bad move. Scrambling to my feet let the bugs swarm over me.

Bugs are not as light as they look. They also have very sticky legs, or so one would think. The truth is that bugs don't have sticky legs. They have barbed legs. Bianca had taught me that bugs were not like us, that they were creatures that walked inside their skeletons. The outside bones - I forget the name - is what makes the barbs. Bugs also have a very bad smell, but most are too small for someone to notice.

Magic curled on my fingers again. I'd run into the belly of the beast, yes, but it had yet to end me, and while I had no right to hope or pray or to think of what I wished, I had the right to fight for her.

It was the only thing, save the jacket and sword, that I could honestly say belonged wholly to me and would stay that way.

The bugs jerked and went tumbling away, rolling and bouncing in their skeletons down the living corridor. Their barbed, prodding, heavy legs wrenched away. They left me exposed to the maze's air once more.

I got up and fired again, and again. The magic was, apparently, good friends with my sword; it took flicks of wrist and blade as orders. Black mist shot out from the arc of my sword and slashed outward into the creatures.

Thing is, though, that bugs have skeletons on the outside. Skeletons now dented but not harmed.

I swerved and shoved the sharp edge of my blade as hard as I could into the rising dog-man. I pushed until I heard a breathless whine, that little surrender, that sign of defeat. Then I broke into a sprint.

The bugs were waiting for me. The many sets of human teeth clacked eagerly with a foreboding hollow sound, bouncing up and down the walls and through my ears. I'd have to slash one and use it to jump over the others. Even if these things could jump or fly, they would never be agile. And the corridor was too small for blundering.

Bugs are also very fast.

My foot came down on a wonderful nothing and maybe if the leg wasn't wounded I'd have caught myself, but it didn't happen, not this time. Dumb of me to use the bad foot for something so crucial. A fatal mistake.

Pain shot up my leg as it collided with the dirt - no longer so soft - in a twisted way and didn't fade as the momentum sent me sprawling forward and yanked away the burden of weight. I crashed into the outside skeletons of the bugs and tumbled to the ground.

My arms writhed. My teeth grit down hard, forcing my tongue to retreat to a safe distance. Bianca was still out there somewhere.

But for all my shifting and all the cold magic on my fingers, I couldn't get up again. I was stuck. Pinned. Trampled. My fingers lashed out and I even bit the ones that came close enough but more just kept coming, a relentlessly marching forest of insect legs. My movements weren't even aimed right.

_Why can't I do this?!_

Something cold seemed to solidify out of nothing on the nape of my neck. "Freeze or die."

It seemed like a good idea. But you don't enter the maze, don't live past the first day, if you aren't going to give its game your all.

The shadow-magic I was so afraid of did what it does. It took the command and all its frustration, all the desperation, and sliced the offending dog-man with devastating success. I lurched up and staggered forward through the bugs as fast as I could.

My legs didn't work right. They wobbled and twisted beneath me, eventually letting me roll over my ankle and introducing the dirt and my face once more. I scrabbled up again as the bugs seemed to watch with contempt.

Blood splashed onto my clawing hands. I didn't notice but for its temperature and gawked in dazed shock. Where had that come from?

Something behind me slugged forward down the tunnel. Something big.

My blind fingers fumbled across my face, down my jaw, across my throat, to my chest - no, there, above the collar bone. A streak of deep, warm mush was pouring blood there. I couldn't even recall when I'd gotten it.

Around me, the bugs retreated, making room for the big thing drawing ever closer.

Screw it. I couldn't fix the wound even if I had time. I couldn't quite see my hands anymore but I made them move, felt the dirt slide past, and knew as long as it did I had no reason to give in-

-Knew that each frantic movement was bringing me closer to her-

Nothing moved to stop me. That was so unreal, here in the maze, that I laughed. I laughed and choked on the blood suddenly tangible in my mouth. They were gone now. Nothing in my way. Nothing between me and her. Nothing on the hunt. The Labyrinth itself had stopped moving and creaking and sneering, fallen into an icy, seizing silence.

The big thing behind me stopped coming forward. I heard it move, not a step but definitely a move, fur brushing against fur as a limb was drawn back-

And then there was nothing.

oOo

"Up."

I groaned and pretended I was liquid. Liquid had no nerves and could melt into the ground flawlessly, never to lift, never to rise above the soil and gather itself wholly enough to obtain a glimmer of consciousness. Never to feel aches.

What a wonder is that? To never feel pain? If my murky memories - no, not even memories, just a watery background, a dim context - were correct, pain was omnipresent. It was a part of everything, a piece of every last crumbling thing on this earth, and yet it itself was eternal. It was a deity all its own.

And so more out of curiosity than anything else, I wanted to be liquid again, to see just how completely I could escape Pain and break the laws of the world. Just to see. To experience. What would it be like?

"Up, Tribe-killer! Now!"

Pain was suddenly very close, however. It shot up my right arm so fast I forgot all about liquid sleep and jolted up with a sharp cry.

I instantly regretted it. My body shrieked in protest. An involuntary sound slid past my lips, burning and bubbling in my wounded throat, and I slumped back onto the cold ground.

Solid ground. No cracks for liquid to seep into here.

The set of jaws clamped on my right triceps vanished slowly, each tooth leaving pulsing signatures in my arm. A wet muzzle thrust itself into my face and sniffed furiously. The sound was like a freaking hurricane and the smell was vile.

"Tribe-killer," the thing growled angrily.

I was not in the mood to converse with this thing. My eyes cracked open and I did my best to give it the same glare Bianca had given me the day I proudly showed her the magnum opus of my vocab-absorbtion skills and then told her she should be glad I was smart enough to use that offensive four-letter word correctly rather than yelling.

I don't think it worked.

The thing was massive. Seven feet tall, maybe, with the hulking head of a maned, snarling wolf. It had a coat of fur like ash-stained snow and eyes of glowing, indifferent blue. It had the expression of a man greatly displeased. "Up," he spat, and then stood roughly. I saw the blur of his pale hind paw swim past my eyes as he went.

Some part of my mind was a little denser than the seeping mush the rest of it was, and it made me move. That little bit realized that things were going to hurt a lot more if I disobeyed my captor. Better to face the horrors coming on my wobbly, turncoat feet than leave it all to the enemy, to the maze.

My part of the game board was still not all that grand. But it still was mine.

So I sat up unsteadily and only then did I realize that I wasn't dead.

_I'm alive. Look at that,_ the notion arrived rather dully.

My gaze lifted to the giant dog-man. We were still in a narrow, dark place, so it must've been in a corridor. Still in the maze. He was standing straight with nose and ears pointed forward. From where light came from. A bright, painful, troubling light. I had a bad feeling about it. It ended our little hallway here but I knew very, very well that it wasn't an exit.

"Fight-place," the dog scowled without looking at me. "We needing across. No bridge. Must fight." The last word was snarled with either disgust or pleasure; I couldn't tell which.

Another heartbeat, another pulse of pain from too many places. My wounded leg, my throat, my temple. "I can't," I said simply.

"Will. Needing impressive not. Bloodtooth win. You be Bloodtooth prize. Bloodtooth be bridge for us both. You obey Bloodtooth. Obey!"

I wasn't quite sure who Bloodtooth was and my mind couldn't figure it out any more than I could walk through walls. I just grunted. Whatever, by this point. Whatever.

I normally would insist that simply waiting for an option to open up is suicide and stupid. The maze doesn't open options up for you, especially when it's on the brink of a bloody victory. But right then, about the only thing I understood was that there was nothing else for me to do.

From somewhere nearby, a loud noise erupted. A thousand voices screaming themselves raw. I flinched.

The dog grunted. "Fight over. Us next. Remember, obey!" At that he strode off into the light. The screams grew louder.

_...A crowd?_

Something nudged me impatiently in the right side. My wounded side. I gasped and blinked away tears to glimpse it was another one of those massive bugs. It was shoving me off towards the light with that squished, baldly indifferent human face.

Standing up was like trying to stand on nothing but water amid Charybdis, but if I didn't think too hard about it, instinct could get me up and moving. The light burned and I had a really bad feeling that, once I left this calm and cool hallway, I would never escape the heat and the screams beyond that shining gateway.

I stepped through without hesitation.

The arena slowly faded into existence for me. A medium-sized, dirt-packed floor. Cement walls topped with spikes, in turn topped with skulls. They were the screams I heard. If I squinted, I could still see countless transparent people standing here on the arena floor, wailing and cursing and pleading. The words were unintelligible in my state.

There was a living crowd, too, mostly comprised of demons. Not too many. I could not hear them.

High up to one side was a platform. A giant sat there. Fifteen feet tall, maybe, with red skin and tattoos I was too far from and too dazed to comprehend. He also did not look happy.

I was in the arena. Across from me was the light-grey wolf-man.

"You cannot," bellowed a voice so deep it had to be the giants, "pick..."

It faded in and out. I think the wolf-man said something back. I'm not sure.

Eventually, someone shoved me again. I blinked up at them in shock. It was the dog. He was prodding me with my own sword, sheathed and proud as it'd always been.

"Take your claws," it snarled. "Fight good. I gave up many meat to chose you as fight-enemy."

The gurgling whispers and cries of the dead grew louder at that. The voices rose in fear and protest and a whole lot of other things I couldn't focus on without feeling my mind slide blissfully away.

Behind them slithered the bulging voice of the giant. "Round one!"

That one part of my mind still functioning, at this point, noted that I was screwed.

_DUCK!_ the nearest ghost shrieked so loudly that for a moment my limbs were hers and I ducked without a moment's stalling. There was the sleek clash and swish of blades overhead moments later.

Long claws taking a swipe.

_Die!_ some ghosts yelled. _Win for us!_ cried others.

_Left!_ barked another. I jumped left blindly. Then jerked back on instinct.

Something about the energy buzzing around was... familiar...

_Fight!_ a ghost screamed.

I jerked awake. There was a dog-man in front of me, big but not as big as the leader of the group that'd attacked Mr. Bombastic and I before, and he was approaching fast. There were ghosts nearby but for the moment I snapped back into myself, like a rubber band stretched too far. They were distant. Much less real than the claws moments from my throat.

My right leg was weak and aching. I let it give and rolled into the fall, beneath the demons' lunge. The ground shoved away my air but honestly not dying was very worth it.

I got to my feet again and for one scary moment found that my balance was nonexistent. I nearly toppled over.

_Diemovefightwinduckleavehelpstopruncowerpleadlostmazestuckburning_ the ghosts thought feverishly. They were so packed here in this arena that I could feel their cool temperature everywhere, was always stuck with my arm or leg or everything wedged through a bodiless soul.

A flash of awareness that wasn't mine saw fur swinging in from the left. I managed another clumsy duck and doge.

I couldn't keep this up for long.

_First task; don't die. Forget escaping. Just don't die. _Spirits jeered, cheered, and spat in response to my resolution. But it was mine and I knew it well. I lost more ground ducking beneath large blows that moved faster than I could think.

_Right!_ yelled the ghost who'd been the most helpful so far. I ducked and rolled right. My sword flashed out as I went, anchored in something solid, and swung my momentum around in a circle. I wrenched it free and retreated a few feet into a loose battle stance almost entirely by habit.

_Not bad_, the spirit commented, thoughts swimming with grim memories.

_Swordsmen a thousand times better than you have died here!_ spat another, mind red-hot with anger. _You deserve no better!_

Though my own eyes and too many colored, raw, painful spirit-senses to count, I saw the wolf-man swagger as he turned, unfazed but mad as a hellhound on a leash. Then my thoughts vanished again.

A surge of eagerness ran through me. It was tinged with a sour aftertaste. The ghost I was reading could feel the searing heat of the monster as it lurched forward. Maybe the ghost would be lucky and get to watch this annoying little kid who thought he could saunter around the business of the dead get eaten and become as bound and hopeless as everyone else here.

I stumbled out of the way again. Not fast enough to avoid a great clawed-hand hitting my shoulder, but enough to be sure that my shoulder hadn't been the target.

Then, with a moldy taste of blue, from another angle came a memory of a similar monster, making similar moves, similar strikes. An undercut from the right came next.

I dragged my feet back, knowing I had no prayer of dodging with a jump. Not to mention the momentum was already barreling the beast forward.

Another memory boiled to the surface with a clarity like none other - it was of Bianca, of how strange she looked in silver and how unnerving it was to see her lift a bow as if it were a part of her and always had been. That memory... it... it was mine...

In a flash, I had my sword leveled. The surging dog got a muzzle full of Stygian iron. A screeching whine escaped it as it wheeled back in a panic.

There had been no halting its force, though. It was like being hit with a truck. I crumpled into the dirt. The sword strayed from my fingertips. The weight of pain and wounds suddenly was real again, too, along with all the too-sharp memories and the cries of the living monster crowd around us. The ghosts retreated into a frightened hum in the background.

The soil was warm and grainy and hard. My gaze moved around, looking for my sword-

-A clawed hand now, at my throat. Not much pressure but enough to keep me still.

"Move not," the dog hissed. Out of options again, I moved not.

Up in the stands, the great read fuzz in my vision that marked the giant began to shift and move. A limb of some sort extended in a signal.

"Be dead," the demon dog warned, and locked its jaws over my throat.

Panic sprang to life. I choked and thrashed against the thick neck, strong jaws, snarling lips. My heart hammered. The sword was gone and the mere thought of magic was exhausting but I didn't care, didn't care, Bianca... she was...

The dream-like quality that'd hung over the world since I woke advanced again. My thoughts scattered in its wake. All but the memory of her in silver.

I tried to move. My body would not react. I watched, confused, as my hands dangled and were dragged across a dark surface. Wood? Dirt? I didn't know.

"Good. Stay dead," the dog whispered softly. "Stay dead. Bloodtooth being bridge."

A loud voice was bombing from a place I couldn't identify. "Good entertainment!" it said, over and over.

The light vanished. Cold winds brushed against my cheek. Terror seized me as I recognized the maze, but there was not a nerve in my body that was able to react.

"Good fight, Tribe-killer," the dog said around my throat, which was handled rather gingerly. "Naughty, but good. Did not know Tribe-killer could bleed and fight well."

I had no idea what he was talking about.

"Tribe-killer and Bloodtooth past fight-place now. Good job for Bloodtooth. We track Tribe. There, Tribe-killer be dead for real. Worry not. Bloodtooth knows way."

That's the last thing I can remember.

oOo

I had two dreams.

Or, I think it was two. The one about the arena had faded in and out, in and out. Dreams that mean something - like all demigod dreams - don't do that. That one, though, had been real one moment and watery the next. One second I was among ghosts and using them desperately against a dog and then the next I was swimming through meaningless swatches of color. It might have been a dream, I guess. Or it might've been a memory plagued with delusion and/or delirium.

The next one was definitely a dream. I knew because I'd had it before.

I was sitting in a desert. It was nighttime, not too cold, not too hot. But it was dry. There was sand crammed between my toes and it'd opened many a nick and crimson crevice across my skin. My eyes were so crusted with the sand it was like they were rusted into squinting for life. And my throat was screaming in pain.

I was thirsty.

The thing is with night and deserts, though, is that it's when those nameless hours between light and dark slip by, when the sky thinks nothing in its hustling to get to the next important thing, that things come out to play. In the forgotten hours, they thrived.

Nobody came to kill them in the forgotten hours. Lizards and snakes could bask without the sun drying them to a crisp. Scorpions would hunt the lazy insects that were either returning to home or leaving it. Owls were just waking and eagles were dozing off. The same way I did not move as I utilized my sword but rather used my sword as I moved, these things slid into action amid the action, in hidden times and places, in the precious spaces overlooked.

The sky was staining purple and my throat was very dry and the monster came out to play.

This was not a monster as my sword would recognize it. It was worse.

My height, perhaps. Gleaming like a star in the sand. Or like water. Yes, yes, liquid water. I wanted the sparkling water so bad. It'd wash away the sand and save my parched throat.

It had hands and feet like a man, but carved of metal. Eyes where eyes should be, but they were soulless, thoughtless, careless. Like the brainwashed humans in the cities but thousands of times worse.

It walked towards me calmly, just like the demon in the maze.

There was a sinking feeling, as always, that this thing had nothing to do with life-saving water.

I backed away slowly at first, hands held up in surrender. It did not care. It kept marching forward at that same, slow speed. I yelled for it to shoo and shoved a finger off into the waxing night.

It kept coming. Closer and closer, step by slow, tiny step.

I drew a sword (not my sword but a sword, I always had a weapon of some sort, a knife or a deck of cards or once even a dart gun) and held it up threateningly. It didn't even seem to notice, not even when I slashed it through the air.

Terror seized me then. Against all my ten-year-old wisdom and everything I'd seen on television, I threw my only weapon.

It wouldn't have been so bad if the thing bounced off harmlessly. Thing is it didn't. I had a good arm and lucky aim. The sword sheared straight through the head of the metal monster, leaving only its jaw and part of one ear atop the neck.

It did not stop.

Step, step. _Psh, psh_, in the sand. One arm swinging at a time, always the one opposite the advancing foot. Perfectly in time to a perfect beat.

I gave up. I turned and ran.

From the direction I fled to, things appeared. Arrows of silver flying through the air to impale themselves mercilessly into the shimmering bronze. I found a knife lying in the sand and threw that, too. Even a little lizard I found, hoping maybe the tail would fall off and jam those whirring gears.

Whirring. It was close enough to hear now.

It never stopped marching.

By the time I had worked it down to nothing but the torso, all limbs left behind like meaningless trash along our trail, night had been born in honest, and the slick in-between hours were gone. Stars did not shine.

_Whirrrrrrr. Whirrrrrr. Psh. Whirrrrrr._

It made footsteps with no feet. The shining core of the demon continued to move forward at its normal pace, floating just above the sand.

_Whirrrrr. Psh. Whirrrrr. Whirrrr. Whirrrr-psh._

Metal arms erupted from the sand. They clamped down on my ankles so hard that the bone cracked. I screamed and fell backwards into the golden grains. The action tore my throat to shreds and I was condemned to silence.

_Whirrrr,_ the machine went. Same pace. Same pitch. Unexcited. Uncaring even in victory.

The dream goes on beyond that. It involves Bianca and a much bigger machine and a lot of blood and a lot of pain. For many reasons, one of which being I don't like to wallow in that moment, I do not talk about it.

oOo

There was not a single thing I could name that was as disheartening as that nightmare. A worthy punishment, I guess, for all the times I messed up and soiled the maze's carefully planned corridors.

Punishment for every memory that urged on a stinging smile. For laughing with Mr. Bombastic. The maze punished happiness.

So I didn't really protest against the hollow feeling I had when I woke. There was still no time for tears or screams, but I let it hurt. I rode it out in a way I hadn't been able to do the first time I'd had that dream.

As the mental ache faded I became aware of my wounds again. They stung. But my head was nowhere near as bad as it'd been in the arena/fight-place dream, and things seemed to make sense now. For the most part. The ground I laid on was hard-packed, dry, grainy dirt. I could feel it move and vibrate as things moved and spoke nearby, seemingly indifferent to me. Which was good, for now.

Around us, the maze had resumed its usual droning. Thank the gods. All of this was more luck than I'd dared to wish for.

No doubt something in this Labyrinth was going to kill me if I didn't get moving soon, wounded or not. I grit my teeth against the hot pain in my throat and sat up, slowly, carefully. Then once up I made sure my back was straight, because Bianca always insisted on not ruining myself with poor posture. I was ruined enough as it was, so I guessed that bad posture was not a risk I should take.

My head didn't like that. First it spun and then it hurt but, if I was patient, patient the way the maze had taught me to be, patient the way Bianca had tried time and time again to coax from me, it trailed away. For a moment there, I'd felt like I was going to be sick, but that passed too.

_Not bad. Not too bad. Holy Hera, look at that, I'm alive. I guess the game's not over._

I'd long since known that the maze could cheat with impunity, and so it enjoyed that freedom frequently, but this was a new one. A new configuration. A new trap. I had no clue what to expect of it next. What I needed to do to get out. I wasn't even sure what to expect upon turning to examine the large moving things.

It was the dog-men.

There were at least twenty of them, most likely more. So many and moving too naturally in that heavy but sleek way of theirs to be anything but comfortable with that, even in a room where they'd be hard-pressed to find a place for their fathom to fit. They milled around in a circular room with a domed ceiling so high I could only imagine its top. Perhaps we were beneath a mountain.

Strewn across the room in a semi-orderly fashion that existed to make things convenient and nothing more were various things; nests of old cloth and feathers were generally gathered on the far side and to the left. Across from it and closer to where I was sat a cleared area that reeked. The soil there was red save for where the gleam of white bones showed through. An empty mess hall.

Along the curved walls, rocks thrust themselves up from the dense soil. Here the dogs were sharpening their claws. Before where I sat was another collection of bones. These were clean, though, and among other things such as old socks and ravaged soccer balls and even a skull. Dog toys, I figured, though I didn't see any pups.

Probably because I was here, despite that I was trapped in a cage. I wouldn't have let puppies near it even if it were empty. It was a rectangular thing build sturdily of bones and wood and barbed wires, each of its many legs thrust into the soil and crawling overhead to gleam down at me in the strange yellow light they had here.

Perhaps I could have dug myself out, if I had time and no enemies nearby...

"Awake. Tribe-killer second is awake."

I instinctively stiffened at that voice, my own growl on the tip of my tongue. The pale-furred male that'd dragged me here leaned into view and peered through the bristling bars. "Hello, pup. Pup is small to be Tribe-killer. Tragic pup story."

Another dog narrowed its eyes at me. This one was female, wearing loose cloth where necessary but for the most part covered simply in short fur of smoky blue. She had yellow eyes. Another joined in, too, with black fur and crooked teeth. A second male with large ears and amber eyes. Many noses twitched and sniffed curiously.

I scowled at them. I couldn't play against the maze while trapped in a kennel. Much less while being watched.

"Move."

Frantic shuffling and quick, important shoves were made. The dog-people retreated real fast.

In their place, looming and dripping spit from old yellow fangs, was a massive one suffering from mange. His eyes were a flickering orange, like sickly embers from a long-dead fire, and they stood out as if the sun had given up and the whole world was pitch black.

He knelt before the bars to my cage, callused fingers bleeding on the spikes but coldly indifferent. This close I could smell the stink of the parasites and see too clearly the ragged, torn flesh where they had struck. The tan fur was dirty and ragged and brushed the wrong way in many places. The whole thing smelled of _brutally sick._

But he moved, breathed, and snarled as if he were healthy.

I backed up slowly.

He snorted and stood abruptly. "Tribe-killer second?"

It took me too long to realize he was talking to me. "...Yes?"

"Yes _Alpha_," the dog snapped.

"Yes, Alpha?"

The dogs nearby made rough, guttural noises. A few barked. Sneers of fangs and bold molars lit up like torches around us. The Alpha remained unamused.

He glared a few more moments before saying, "You kill tribe. Yes?"

I was very, very tempted to break Bianca's rules and lie. Lying would be good.

Instead I said, "Yes, Alpha."

"Kill pup?"

"Not that I know of. Alpha."

Those eyes narrowed. "Big pup. My pup." He pointed with one claw to where a female stood in the back of the crowd, a blue-furred thing with more fur but no more robust. She would not meet my eyes.

I recognized the face nonetheless.

_Quick, think. Who killed that first one? Me or Mr. Bombastic?_

My silence was taken as an answer.

A snarl quickly turned into a bark. The sound was like gunfire, shattering the air between us. I flinched back. "Ages, we track you! We track you and you kill more! One pup? Forgive not. Many Tribe? War. War on all flat-faced no-furs. No more hunt for food. Now, hunt no-furs as sport. As war. Many dead no-furs." His tail swished and he bent over the cage. Claws poked down at my eyes. Dog slobber slowly advanced from above. "You cause all of it."

I swallowed thickly and nodded.

He leaned back and growled, perilously dissatisfied. "You, too, be dead no-fur. Soon."

Dogs whined and scowled at that. All except for the pale one, who narrowed his eyes eagerly.

"Hurry," the Alpha told him. "Want Tribe-killer first. Want Tribe-killer first and second dead soon. Then we fear them not."

"Bloodtooth hurry," the dog said. He dipped his head once and flattened his ears. Then he vanished down a side tunnel. Not before, however, I saw my sword strapped across his back.

Alpha did not look at me again. He left, too, taking his saturnine mate with him.

oOo

By nightfall (or at least what I figured could have been night because dogs were not nocturnal creatures), the maze had grown cold, and my body had become something much more abstract. I couldn't feel my fingers and toes so much as simply wade in a loosely-knit network of pains and aches. Many had awaken as I wasted away in the cage and time slogged on and the dogs mulled about aimlessly.

My head had grown tired of compliance, for one. And every time I ran my fingers absently across the itch by my throat, the fingers came away red. Hunger was also setting in. It wasn't so bad, now, but I knew what a slippery slope that was. Now, I could stand it. In a few days?

No matter how bad the wounds you knew were, hunger was always worse. Hunger was deeper than any cut, relentless beyond any poison, and scarier than any amount of blood.

What really bothered me was the way my mouth watered at the mystery meat the dog-people happily tore into, without the hindrance of cleanliness or mind for utensils. I didn't ask where it had come from just in case they planned on offering me any. But, of course, they didn't.

And so now here I was, drifting like a loose piece of dust or a wanderer of the Labyrinth - hah - in the dark, beneath gleaming, bloody bars. My mind had lost all interest in trivial escape plans or futile dreams of burgers. Just kind of existed.

I'd have slept if I wasn't so afraid to leave my captors unattended. My mind wandered into places it shouldn't have again.

Maybe... maybe if I killed enough monsters, Father would be impressed enough to give Bianca back...

Something howled.

The dogs leaped from sleep and into fighting positions, crouched and bristling and growling so loudly they all sounded like Zeus himself storming through the corridors. The noise was like needles in my ears. I groaned and rolled onto my back, then bit back a curse as that only jostled a few unpleasant things.

The howl came again. The growling stopped rather suddenly. Soft pads and scuffles and even a few friendly yips could be heard. Slowly, slowly, like cold frost crawling up and over the boldest winter grass, those quiet exchanges built into excited barks. Words bubbled into a bursting existence.

"Bloodtooth! It is Alpha-pup Bloodtooth!"

Alpha-pup? So it was his brother I killed? Well, that explained a few things.

Interest sparked in me as their words melded back into their native tongue, the urge to look raging. So of course I pretended to be asleep, or otherwise to not care. This was still the maze, after all.

"Quiet!" I heard Bloodtooth snap. The dogs fell silent. Heavy footsteps quit echoing playfully and became real, heavy things. Approaching at a leisure pace.

_Asleep. Stay asleep. Stay quiet and still and seemingly harmless and pretty unreadable. And stay patient._

Bianca was going to be so proud of me when I got her back.

Bloodtooth halted at the cage. I waited for him to snort or snip or maybe even say something and then walk away, off to his den or nest or whatever it is you'd call a demon's home. Cave. Burrow.

Maze.

But instead, the cage opened.

_Patience. Too many here. Too many watching._

_But I want to. He has my sword. I could take it and feel it again, like it's a part of me. I could use it._

_Too many. If you run into a massacre, who'll come for Bianca?_

I almost yelled in frustration as the thoughts ran around in suicidal circles, they were so fast and relentless. Before I could pick a winner, the cage was closed again.

Laughter tickled my throat at that. Of course there was no winner. That title belong to the maze, to the problem, to the very contest. Who else gained quite as much? Ha-ha. Hilarious.

Isn't it?

Something moved. Right there, right next to me, an explosion of snarls and scuffling. My arms tensed and my eyes snapped open. It wasn't a dog, but it looked and moved like one. The shadows shifted and in that way I saw it; a massive shape heaving itself at the edges of the containment, heedless of the spikes, mindless of the hot blood that showered down across my nose and in the dirt and reeked with a hot, revolting stench. Of any pain it might've been in.

I slowly relaxed and closed my eyes again, and left my ears on sharp guard. The thing was insane. No use forcing any communication between us, not without observing first, so I pretended to stay asleep. It didn't seem to have noticed my mistake.

Bloodtooth snarled at it. "Sad. Worst than Tribe-Killer Second. Much sadness. I liked you."

_Now _he left.

Still, the crazy thing swiped at the cage. For several minutes. The other dogs held a pressed silence, save the three or so in the back whispering.

_Ya know, maybe if the insane creature died, I could eat it. That'd tide over the hunger and tick the dogs off..._

"You!" the new prisoner gasped. Then it lunged at me.

I swear, I had never moved so fast. I didn't bolt upright but instead rolled over and dashed across the cage as fast as I could crawl. The sandy rock floor scraped at my palms and I caught a small scratch off the cage, but it was nothing, could never burn as much as the need to move.

"Stop! Stop!" my roommate snapped. "I'm trying to help you. _Again. _ Don't you recognize your savior?"

He chose that moment to start glowing.

I wasn't sure if I should've been glad or depressed. I settled for annoyed. "Quit that! I was trying to sleep!"

The glow dimmed sharply. "Geez. Ungrateful brat." Mr. Bombastic scooted forward slowly. "Here. Your scratches look bad. I was just trying to give you some ambrosia." He held out one of his dessert-medicines.

It smelled good. It looked sickly in his light. But still, I could see... a few sugar crystals on it, glimmering brightly... I snatched it up fast and hid it beneath my tongue before the dogs could see.

It melted slowly there. Sliding down my throat like liquid. A world of warmth bloomed from it. Even the hunger lost its edge.

"Yeah. Told you. Have one more. If I'm going to bust us out of here, you need to be in shape to run, else all my efforts will have been for nothing. And I'm not interested in the pointless."

I ate another happily. The headache completely withered, at long last, and I no longer felt like I should be sleeping. My fingers moved when I asked them to. My eyes could see the little bright circles marking the curious dogs that watched us.

I could hear and feel the maze fully again. It creaked in recognition.

Mr. Bombastic had moved back to the front of the cage and peered curiously back at the canines. I joined him, and his light went out. We sat there for a long while, both patient, both worthy of Bianca's pride, and listened.

He tapped my hand roughly. Once, twice, three times... I counted twenty-three in total.

Twenty-three dogs in this room. Twenty-three quiet breathing patterns.

"I can take 'em," Mr. Bombastic decided.

I sighed. "Then how did _one_ capture you?"

"It did not!" he protested with enough noise to wake the dead. But not, apparently, sleeping dogs. "It... I... I _meant_ to get captured. I heard they had Tribe-Killer Second and knew it had to be you, so I let it take me. I couldn't leave you at their disgusting paws. My only weakness was this tender, loving heart of mine. It gets me into so much trouble that, now and then, I worry."

I blinked, caught between wondering about calling him out on that or wondering how he'd expected me to believe it. "...Did you just admit to having a_ weakness_?"

He caught my look, apparently misread it, and rolled his eyes. "You don't get it. Why couldn't you have been a nice, hot girl?"

Not quite sure where the answer to that was supposed to come from, I retreated back a few feet.

There were more minutes of listening. Of being good, patient little boys. Then I caught his expectant look.

Oh. He was wanting me to listen to something else.

_How odd,_ I thought as I laid against the floor again. _He's the first person I've met who's asked me to work my magic. First living person, anyway. Most people are scared. _

Scared of the bones and whispers. Scared of the wrong things.

I was scared of the way it all tasted to me. That... That I didn't find the bones so scary.

At the time, though, I was only grateful. Another trait Bianca had tried so hard to work into me. You see, this was the room the dogs ate in, and for all their gorging, they were dogs, and rarely thought to clean their mess beyond a few scratches among loose dirt.

And the dead don't leave this maze.

I opened my eyes and met Mr. Bombastic's expectant gaze. Anxious gaze. I couldn't count high enough to answer, so I did my best to mimic what people call a smile.

I got his larger-than-life grin in response.

oOo

Come morning, I had obtained three new things, soon to be four.

Two were squares of ambrosia shoved into an easy-to-reach pocket, to be available while on the move. The third was a chance out of this, a chance to cheat death, a chance to keep playing, a chance to gamble with the maze until I found Bianca again.

All thanks to Mr. Bombastic.

I heard him cussing furiously at the dogs now. He was filled with the anger that only humiliation could drive. There was practically heat pulsing relentlessly from every last syllable.

Good, because it was cold on the dirt where I laid patiently, and the hunger was trouble enough for this enormous task.

As if sensing my thoughts, the smallest of rumbles shook the earth beneath us. A gentle greeting or perhaps an impatient agreement. I almost chuckled now at the familiarity of it but bit my tongue - Mr. Bombastic had been right when he explained the dogs would still expect me to be injured, and I'd been so patient lately, it'd be a shame to break my good streak.

"What gives you the right, anyway?!" said ally screamed now. "You're nothing but cannibalistic hybrids! A bunch of mindless _dogs_!"

"Quiet," a female snarled irritably.

"Oh. Right," Mr. Bombastic allowed with that mean laugh of his. "I guess you're not a dog. Technically you're called a-"

"She barked QUIET!" a booming voice roared.

Mr. Bombastic snarled but did not speak.

Heavy footsteps approached from an echoing tunnel that had not been there before. Three sets, to be exact. I longed to look and see.

"Good dog," the speaker crooned. I sucked in a breath. No way Alpha had been able to roar so loud. Had that really been him?

I recalled him from the day before, the sleek muscles and unyielding eyes and the cuts across his palms and yes, yes, even aging and lost in grief, Alpha could be that loud. Loud and dangerous.

Mr. Bombastic growled.

"He disrespects," came Bloodtooth's low snarl.

"Peace," said a miniscule female voice. Perhaps Alpha's mate.

"You gave up on peace when you decided humans were a nice snack," Mr. Bombastic huffed. "In case you haven't noticed, most prey isn't _voluntarily in that position_. Living things like to _stay_ that way."

"We kill to live," Alpha said somberly. "You kill for fun."

"What kind of loser doesn't use self-defense? Hel-lo, that jerk tried to _bite my head off_! He tried to kill my apprentice there, too! My apprentice didn't do anything! He didn't even defend himself and kill your stupid friend. _ I_ did! Ask him! Oh, _right,_ my bad. You _can't. _ Because you beat the-"

"Quiet," Bloodtooth snarled.

"-out of him! He isn't a Tribe-Killer or whatever! You're taking out your problems on innocent people! Zeus and all the other gods will punish you for it!"

"The gods," Alpha growled stiffly, "cannot take any more away from us. And they do not see in a place as dark as the maze. That's why you hide here, too, yes?"

"I," Mr. Bombastic spat, "do not _hide_."

"You killed litter-mate Sharpear," Bloodtooth cut them off sharply, "and after, you and Tribe-Killer Second killed many more. Killed hunter Goodnose and fighter Strongclaw. Calmtail and Softfoot and Roughbark. Swiftleg. No more is needing saying."

_Come on,_ I pleaded silently. _ I'm patient but not perfect. Bianca would've loved me more if I was, perhaps enough to stay..._

"You forgot one," Mr. Bombastic said helpfully.

Bloodtooth snarled. "You do not-"

"NOW!"

Sure enough, as promised, when I whirled around I could see the burn marks lining the bars of the cage, even faintly smell the smoke that the dogs must have dismissed as part of the maze. He'd even managed to lure Bloodtooth closer than the others.

I flung the shadow-magic as hard as I could, but wide as well. I felt its thrill as it slammed into the roof of the cage and sent it sailing across the room.

The ends poking up from the dirt had lost all menace now. Mr. Bombastic had cut them flat; they weren't even sharp.

Lots of things happened then. Mr. Bombastic yelled in triumph and charged into the room, the rough cage crashed into Alpha and his mate and they went down beneath it, and the dirt began to rip apart, and Bloodtooth yelped in fury, and everyone began to move-

And I was moving, too, straight for him. I felt the air rush by and heard his nails click as he took a swipe. It passed my ear by an inch, and then I was behind him.

Before I could leap, as fluid and lithe as the movement had become, he'd turned.

A white blur crashed into him. He didn't even budge - the skeleton just clattered and cracked against his form. He snarled at it and clamped his teeth down on the skull.

A blazing white pain lit up on my head as he did. I bit back a scream and took the chance - while he was distracted, I lunged. My fingers clamped on fur. He howled and turned and stomped and claws dug into my back, replacing the pain in my head. The skeleton fell to the floor. I screamed.

But my fingers finally closed on the scabbard and, on its other side, the chain. _Four._

I tugged hard and it just barely slid free. The wolf snarled and leaped at me, murder in those cold blue eyes.

Mr. Bombastic - I hadn't even noticed when he arrived to help pull the sword free - yelled angrily, and a light flashed between us and the demon. It was so bright that I had to hide my eyes. Bloodtooth screamed.

"Move!" Mr. Bombastic barked, and I did not question him. I turned for the nearest exit and ran. His footsteps pulverized the ground at my heels. My legs were so glad to stretch and it was so relieving to hear each footfall he made unhindered.

We ran for our lives, indifferent more or less to the painful fires and cracks and splinters as bone was snapped by teeth. My arms began to twitch wildly as phantom wounds stabbed and ripped and blazed.

The dim light grew stronger and the screams of the fight louder as the air swelled and the walls snapped in. We'd entered the tunnel.

"Now!" Mr. Bombastic advised.

It took all my focus to drag the last bits of my mind from that room. It helped to focus on the way his living light raced skillfully across the ragged walls, slithering over shadows and relentlessly pushing forward. On two sets of footsteps and nothing else, not the scuffling or dirt or hard scrape of bone. Just the light and the distance falling, running away beneath us.

For a small moment, I felt as if I were falling apart at the seems. Then the skeletons were gone and I really was in the tunnel with Mr. Bombastic again.

As soon as they were gone, I felt my legs turn to lead. My feet knew much better than to trip now, though. Mr. Bombastic slowed until I'd wrestled the ambrosia free and crammed them into my mouth.

Howls reached us, but not the dogs. We took off again.

The maze pretended nothing of significance had happened.

oOo

We stopped after hours, when our breath ran out and our legs had grown hot and then cold and hot again and at last seemed to slowly trickle away entirely. Like liquid oozing from a leaky cup.

Bianca had always told me to be careful of that. To not make a mess. To always fear a crack in the china because it could mean the coming of the disaster she'd dubbed 'shattered glass,' even though the subject in consideration would technically still be china.

"Years down here," Mr. Bombastic panted, "and they still... can't navigate this... place any better than we can." That earned an exhausted laugh.

Howls still echoed around us. But they were distant, distant, and faded in and out. We sat down on the ground where we made sure there was no shattered glass or shattered china and breathed. My chest had started hurting by then, too. As if it had shrunk.

Water, now, the dogs had not denied me. My bottle was still clipped to my pants. It was half full. Half-full was a lot in my memories. But recently half-full had seemed to shrink, too, so I was careful to take so little. Then I passed it to Mr. Bombastic.

"So," he said after the last drop was gone. "How long do you think we have?"

I was still panting. "Uhm... An hour or so...?"

He nodded slowly. "That's what I figured. Oh, hey - raise your arms above your head. It helps you breathe better."

It made me feel like an idiot, but he did not laugh at my stupidity and it really did help my lungs feel better. It even cleared my head - it wasn't until then that I realized it had been clouded for the last stretch of the run.

"We'll need more water," Mr. Bombastic sighed wistfully.

"An exit, then," I sighed. "Looking for one won't work, though. No matter how good a looker you are. It's not like finding a lost trading card."

"I know, I know. But hoping you'll stumble across one while the dogs are breathing down your neck won't work, either. We'll have to set out ahead of them, before they find us, and be really careful. You think you can handle that? Setting out early, keeping your thoughts in check?"

I did not answer. He smiled knowingly. "Great. Wake me up in forty-five minutes or so." And to the rough stone floor he slumped.

I poked him. "Hey! I'm tired, too!"

"Yeah, well you can sleep when my time is up. I'll wake you when it's time to move out."

"But... If we're leaving early... And don't tell me you want it more again! That's not fair!"

"Never said it was fair," he sighed. "The longer you keep me up, the longer I'll have to sleep, and the worse off we'll both be. Unless you'd like to ditch my protection and take off on your own again."

The maze's hollow winds answered that morbid suggestion.

"Yeah. Thought so. Look, just take the time on watch to sew your precious security jacket or whatever. Shouldn't be too hard to do both, even here. Sewing's easy. Then it'll be all nice and whole again when we set out. That'd calm your tiny, sentimental little mind... I think I got some spare string somewhere..."

"Sentimental? I'm not sentimental!" I burst. "Besides, a jacket doesn't provide much security. It's a piece of cloth. That's... That's stupid."

He drew a thick white string from his pocket and dropped it in my lap. "Oh? Then why is it the only clean thing you wear? How come you dust it off so often? Why can I pick your jeans pockets but never get an opening for all the patches on that ratty leather? Hm?"

"You pick my pockets?!"

He smiled at me the way grown-ups do, that smile that said he knew something I didn't and that he liked that very much. The smile that Connor and Travis had given me, that Percy had worn, that Bianca had taped to her face as she waved goodbye when the white van and other questers took her away. "Someone special gave it to you. And your biggest weakness is that big heart of yours, hm? Just can't let stuff go? You're just like me."

And then I saw his eyes, and those eyes weren't smiling. They were much kinder than his display of teeth.

My fingers closed over the string. Once again, I could not speak. And I didn't need to.

He looked away sharply. "Well. Kind of. For you it's the biggest of many flaws; to be fair to myself, it's the only one I have." He slid back to the ground again. "Wake me in thirty minutes."

For five, I watched his closed eyes and the unnaturally precise rise and fall of his chest as he forced himself to breathe as if he were asleep. An old tactic Bianca had taught me to help you drift under. For those five minutes, my ears listened to the maze, and my mind slowly retreated back into the sanest of stages it still could call conquered.

From my jacket, I drew my Mythomagic cards. I was reluctant to part with my major players, the big guns, the rare ones. It'd taken ages to collect them all, and the disembowelment of every last special edition, platinum, exotic, spirit, and legendary deck that'd ever existed, from the Underworld Secrets pack to the Gremlin adds. And yet I didn't just want to give him some rinky-dink, low-level leet-nymph-quality minor Olympian.

In the end, it was Apollo's card that I slid into his pocket. "Here. To help minimize your only weakness. So the maze doesn't exploit it."

oOo

A firm hand on my shoulder woke me. Sleep was heavy and daunting but I blinked it away and sat up silently. Mr. Bombastic spared me a glance to be sure I was ready and stood, too.

The dogs could be heard again. Louder, now, though still waxing and waning a bit. Time to move out.

He had two ambrosia blocks left. One he handed to me, just a precautionary measure. I quickly pocketed it inside the new hidden space I'd created with the ripped leather and his string, and then we were off, into the dark groaning and hissing and usual ambiance.

He took the left. I took the right. Turns and extra tunnels were examined quickly and quietly, and without hesitation. Fly-by analysis and off we were again. We made our way down tiled walls to a section of a marble temple to dirt and then back to stone and even an archaic form of plaster, I guess. We passed another cavern glimmering with crystals. Gold was heaped in one corner, too, but we ignored it and kept going.

The dogs never seemed to grow closer or farther. We were slowly going in circles. Or perhaps a more complex shape. Either way, the maze was currently winning.

"Here," Mr. Bombastic whispered. I glanced at his find. The tunnel had a dark look about it, carved of ebony-stained wood and full of odd talismans hanging forlornly from the empty sconces, and scratches on the entrance. But I heard no monster and the rest of the tunnel was unscathed. It was more promising than our current path, which was starting to grow mold.

Into it we went.

"Ich," Mr. Bombastic whispered at one point. "Those dogs have been here. That gods-awful smell is gonna linger for days."

My gaze found an unnatural shimmering in the darkness, a sleek refraction of his light that the rough stone could not dream of replicating. Liquid. "I think that's what they were going for. Do you know of another faction?"

"No. But that doesn't mean there isn't one, or that it's far off," he said grimly. "You'd think they'd stay separated, but they're demons and they like to fight. Plus..." His fingers lifted and twisted around one another, like tortured tentacles, miming the maze's cold presence and tunnels.

"Yeah," I agreed. We picked up the pace.

A strong breeze began to grace our faces. It was cool and crisp, but it still smelled of wolf-man. We traveled upwind nonetheless. The source turned out to be nothing but a small hole in a ceiling twenty feet overhead, crooning sadly at us, as if apologizing for the cruelty it couldn't help.

Now, though, the dogs were much louder.

By silent agreement we kept moving. No time to mourn or fret. Twice, we stopped to breathe for a few minutes. Mr. Bombastic's light would really shine then. His eyes would close and his mind would almost audibly whirr and that light would blaze like a fallen star.

"It's impossible to outlast the maze," he muttered. "Luckily we just have to last long enough to impress it. Shouldn't be hard, what with me here to help. Don't stray quite so far from me this time."

Next came a place not unlike the arena I'd dreamed/dazed about before. A large space with hard-packed dirt underfoot. Loose vines hung form overhead.

Here, Mr. Bombastic hesitated. I looked at him curiously.

"Nothing," he explained in a reverent whisper. "Just... a good feeling about this room. We could wait to ambush them here. They'll be split up to look for us. With a little edge, and a little luck for you, I can fight 'em off. Maybe. And this would be the place to do it. This room is covered with their scent and those massive jerks never feel the need to look up, above their freakishly tall heads." His finger traced the vines, a leaping arch, before stopping near the floor where I saw the bloody battle gleam in his eyes.

"No," I whispered back. "Not a bad battle plan-"

"Of course it's an awesome battle plan! I made it!"

"-but it'll only mean giving away our position and giving them more dead to avenge," I finished anyway.

His light shifted as his gaze floated up to the ambush-vines above once more. There was no telling how far up they went, or what was waiting on the other end. And yet there was a longing there. The longing my stomach had when I'd been three days without food.

"No," I insisted again. "Don't be stupid."

"...Yeah," he eventually agreed reluctantly. We hustled to make up for the lost time.

After that, the dogs seemed to grow quiet. The silence hung like steaming acid in the air.

"Minos," Mr. Bombastic hissed as we padded through a tunnel that could not decide if it was sand or stone. I spared him a glance. "Geez. That's the third time. You picked a bad nickname."

"Dead end," I cut him off. Sure enough, as he grew closer to investigate, his gleam was thrown against the soft grey curve that blocked our path.

"Double back again?" he guessed after a moment. We knew that'd never work twice.

But what other choice did we have?

We spun on our heels and bolted back the way we'd come. Sand, stone, sand, stone. Mostly stone. The clank of wood, once or twice. The side tunnels that'd yawned at us before had retreated rather suddenly.

Then the howling started again. They were deafening now.

"Those dogs need leashes," Mr. Bombastic groaned.

"They're in our tunnel," I hissed when he didn't move. "Hey! We gotta go!"

"Look for a side tunnel," he insisted, and once again we spun around. The dirt made panicked crunching noises with every step. The rock was grainy, and louder. Giving us away.

There were no new tunnels. The stench of the demons was no longer just their scent markers.

Mr. Bombastic yelled in anger. I heard it before I saw the flail of motion and whirled. The first dog had pinned him to the floor. The clear sheen in its eyes glowed in his light. So did the spit that hung from his fangs.

I executed it quickly with my sword. Then we were running again, back towards the dead end, with the pack close enough that Mr. Bombastic lit up their eyes, too.

My sword trailed along the ground. Two skeletons emerged, two new sets of eyes that forced their way into my mind. We kept running. They didn't.

"How many?" Mr. Bombastic demanded.

I could hardly quit balking long enough to answer. "Too many." There was a horrible sear of pain and the snap of fragile bones, then my mind belonged to me alone once more. For good measure, I let my sword fire a bolt of black magic behind us. Mr. Bombastic copied with his own move - a snap of the fingers that sent a blade of light arcing towards the ravenous wolves.

We alternated. We ran. We searched for an exit.

Not one. If this still ended with that empty stone room...

No sooner had the thought crossed my mind did I see the bleak grey surface slither up from the darkness ahead.

Mr. Bombastic cussed loudly and fired another blast behind us. The dogs only howled louder. Their footsteps were now like thunder.

Fear began to crawl up my throat. It had claws, no, spikes in a hard exterior. Like the big cockroaches. _No. No. Not yet. I'm not done yet. I don't think._

My comrade did not seem to like the dead-end room. He paused at the threshold and looked back, as if he'd rather take his chance with the dogs there. I ran into the room and felt along the walls and floor.

No bodies nearby. No help.

And then the unthinkable happened. The maze showed us a true miracle.

"Up there!" I screamed, leaping for the cold ceiling. There was a hole in it now, leading straight up, with neat little ladder rungs there on one side. Our escape tunnel really did exist!

Mr. Bombastic almost reluctantly turned and sprinted to where I was, dangling from the lowest rung by one hand. The dogs looked like one massive, chaotic wave of black water. Black water with little glowing pearls and foam and teeth. Too close.

"Move!" he hissed, and shoved my feet. My arms were good at this, as when Bianca made us go to the park, the jungle gym had always been my favorite. The world shrunk down quickly to the thin circular hole. Darkness moved in even faster. I liked it.

Mr. Bombastic grunted as his fingers audibly clamped down on the rungs. His head bumped into my hip.

Teeth clamped down on my ankle. It felt like it'd been crushed between two sledge hammers. The awful grinding of bone against bone made my whole leg light with pain. I took it out on my tongue. The blood was warm and fell pitifully short. The scream almost escaped.

"Stop," I choked out, and the shadow-magic thing, the monster I had on a leash, lashed down at the offender. There was a whine and then my leg was free. Hanging limp, but free.

Mr. Bombastic was worse off. I heard him yell and curse. A swift glance down told me he'd been scratched. His body swayed back and forth, back and forth, crushing mine and then not, as he swung to avoid the jumping canines.

There are no words for the relief I felt when my feet were finally enveloped in darkness with the rest of me. I climbed the next few rungs and then Mr. Bombastic was beside me, too, our eyes level but his feet just barely inside the hole.

Beneath us, the dogs howled and jumped still. Twice I felt the solid ground rumble as they hit the roof below.

Mr. Bombastic smiled. "Keep going. They can still claw at us."

My hand reached for the next rung. It was not there. Rather, my knuckles dragged across a rough and sharp wall of stone.

Suddenly the darkness was not so inviting.

"No," I rasped, shoving on it. It did not budge In fact, it wasn't a door or wall of any sort - it was part of the tunnel, not closing an opening but more like the bottom of a cup flipped upside-down. The deepest point of a puncture wound.

We were stuck. Trapped.

I was so scared, tears began to run down my cheeks. I felt my hands shaking again. This was the part where Bianca would take my hand and lead me somewhere private and hug me until it was over, only she wasn't here now. There wasn't anyone to promise the dream wasn't real or that the monsters were just a silly movie or a joke. No light that could dispel the shadows. No more leash on my monsters, not the darkness or the wolves.

She wasn't here anymore. Might never be again, if I didn't find her.

"Move," Mr. Bombastic hissed. His light did not come on but he bullishly wriggled upwards and slammed his hands as hard as he could into the stone.

I slid down one rung and bit back a whimper, feeling around for nonexistent seams. My mind worked faster and better. We could hide up here for a while, yes, but not longer than the dogs, not if they had too many to fight. They were smart enough to arrange guarding shifts. And we could not rely on the maze to deliver a miracle.

Stupid us. Brave, selfish, stupid us.

"Hurry! Before they get away!" Bloodtooth howled beneath us. The noise was deadly in our small space. Desperate dogs that couldn't see our predicament began leaping higher.

It wouldn't take them long, though, to figure out that we weren't moving anywhere.

Mr. Bombastic slapped the top of the hole again. Nails scrapped across stone. "Dangit!" His legs tried to lift higher, but his knee could not bend without banging into mine. Our elbows could hardly bend now, either, we were so pressed so tight. He smelled of sweat and wintergreen mints.

"DOWN!" a voice beneath us thundered. The dogs did not quiet nor halt their bouncing, but I heard their footsteps shuffle away.

Alpha.

His footsteps were audibly heavier than the others as he approached at a run. His jaws were audibly closer when they snapped shut. A startled yelp escaped him when, on his way down, he crashed into the edges of the tunnel.

His teeth had grazed my jeans.

We were blind it was pitch black now but I could imagine him, that massive mangy thing with death in his eyes and ignored in his skin. That thing was dangerous. That thing was so large there was no hiding not even here we could squirm all we wanted he would not miss next time...

Claws snagged on my wounded ankle. I went down three rungs. The excited screech the dogs gave off as a result drowned out any scream I think I made. I twisted and crushed Mr. Bombastic and then I was free and we were scrambling again, up up up into the space that wasn't there. His elbow smashed my nose and mine jabbed his ribs and our hands got tangled in our hair. His knee pinched my hip. Maybe - maybe, if we squeezed, it was a long shot but it was all I had and I couldn't be done yet-

My sneaker was clawed off of my wounded foot.

"Come out," Alpha sneered as the dogs howled and the sound of ripping fabric exploded into existence. "Run no more."

I could feel Mr. Bombastic's heart, that weakness he said he had, double its pace against mine.

I felt him flinch as his foot was grabbed next. At the same time felt the back of the furry hand touch my wounded sole. Our breath made the little air between us hot, stuffy, and wet.

Canine sniveling was our ambiance now. No more moaning and groaning.

"Now!" Alpha barked. "Down now!" His giant head sunk its teeth into my jeans at the knee, ripping them free. Still we struggled against the stone.

I couldn't die here. No. No, not now. Not alone, not in the maze. Not without Bianca. Death would mean no more fear but gods, oh, gods, I could not abandon her like that. It was the will to live that leaked the fear. Not death.

_Please. Anything but losing her again._

I would not die here. No matter how much the claws hurt or how scared I was or the impossibility of it all.

Mr. Bombastic swore again. I felt his blood trickle down my shin.

_No way out. There's no way out. Can't escape can't outwit can't outlast can't hide..._

"NOW!" Alpha bellowed. His teeth grabbed onto my last good foot, ripping it from the railing.

_"NO!"_ I screamed. My mind had found the only way out. One hand clamped on the railing and the other, already having wriggled into place, slammed as hard as it could into Mr. Bombastic's side. I had no time to wonder if my aim was right in the dark but as soon as the impact came I knew I'd been right. The flesh was weak on the surface and whatever was beneath gave in way, way too easily.

Just for good measure, I hit him again fast, once more right where the soft spot was. It was unnecessary. My sword had done a good job on him; the healing flesh had torn and blood was dripping down my fingers and he made an awful noise, something between a groan and a choke. His glow burst into painful life. My second strike provided the smallest momentum and sent him on his way down. His limp fingers slid easily from the ladder.

I clung as close as I could to the wall, and that almost wasn't enough. I felt his heavy body pull on me, whether it was coincidental or on purpose, before he'd fallen far enough for the dogs to be so sharply outlined he crashed into Alpha, knocking them both loose and down into the dead-end room.

There were two wolf whines and a whole lot of barking. Mr. Bombastic screamed in terror and lurched away from the nearest one but they were packed tight, like the stuffing inside of new shoes fresh from the store you find crammed into the toes. Bloodtooth's jaws got his thigh and Alpha's his shoulder and another his middle, teeth sunken deep into the flesh so that I couldn't see their glow in his light. They writhed and wrenched as if they were the ones caught. The sound was unbelievably loud, enough to drown out the excited demons - a thunderous tear accented with a sharp and quick _snap_ at the end, and Mr. Bombastic was in two pieces. Even his blood gleamed with an ephemeral black light.

His scream died out quick enough, I guess, but the glow did not. The world beneath became a dizzying obsidian ocean, with nothing but wild movement to be seen as the dogs swarmed in on their kill. None of them jumped for me again.

I scrambled up to the top of the hole, bending my knees freely and curling up at the very top where previously just our two upper halves could fit, and squeezed that last square of ambrosia in my mouth before settling down to wait. My eyes closed, but there was no way to tune out the sound of a sloppy meal eaten by sloppy creatures.

Beneath the yips and snivels and tears and cracks, though, the maze had started to move again.

oOo

I pushed a girl off the jungle gym once.

She had been annoying me, asking me questions, and then telling me every answer I gave was wrong. She did that annoying thing that adults did, when she put her hands on her hips and leaned forward and moved her head from side to side with every word. Only I wasn't about to mistake her for an adult. Eventually she told me that I didn't deserve the top spot on the playground and, when she moved forward to ask me to move, I'd pushed her.

The landing was not soft but it wasn't deadly. I'd very much enjoyed watching her get what she deserved. Then she'd started crying. That's when I remembered how much pain sucked.

Her mother had picked her up and carried her off to the side. Bianca, who'd just been speaking with said mother, had come for me, too. She wore an adult's face, too, only she was much better at it. And much scarier.

"Nico. Get down," she'd told me. "Now."

I'd gotten down. Of course, there was a lecture waiting. Technically we hadn't even been on a playground - just the sofas in the hotel's massive waiting room - and shouldn't have been horsing around, for one (though I didn't see a horse anywhere to begin with). Then there was my 'selfish, rude attitude'.

"It doesn't matter how she treated you, Nico. You never have the right to push or hurt someone like that. You should go say you're sorry. And let her push you onto your butt while you're at it, see how enjoyable it is."

The girl's mother had looked up and smiled at that. To this day, I am not sure whether it was her or Bianca who'd been joking. When I apologized and the girl really did decide she should push and hit back, Bianca had gotten between us. The mother just chuckled and led the girl to the elevators, holding a wad of napkins to her bleeding elbow.

Bianca had given me another speech that night about sharing. So what if we both wanted the top spot? We could take turns. No big deal. No need to place someone else's want before another's.

_But I wanted it more,_ I'd said.

What on earth would she say to me now?

By the time the dogs were done and tired out, my hiding place had grown taller. There was now an extra three feet of room. Unnecessary, by this point. When the sound of crunching and thick swallows had worn thin, Alpha had poked his head into the tunnel and reported aloud that I was out of sight and had left no nose-trail. I was gone.

"Home? Home?" the dogs had begun to ask of their alpha.

"Finish," Alpha had snarled. "Then home." They left not long after.

There was still only way out of the room. It was lit, now - sometime while I was distracted, torches had appeared in the hall. I waited for another hour before daring to climb into the illuminated dead end.

The smell of the dogs mingled with that of blood and flesh. I coughed and buried my nose in my jacket. There was indeed blood, drying on the walls and floor. But aside from that every bone had been licked clean. They were scattered across the room seemingly at random. They went well with the new light. They'd become nothing more than background scenery.

My arms and legs, exhausted from holding me up there, shook and gave way when I reached the nearest wall. I sunk to the floor, closed my eyes, and breathed.

Some voice in the back of my mind warned me that I should feel hungry and thirsty by this point, but I did not. I was just tired. In fact, the idea of food combined with the room's musky reek made me want to vomit.

The maze kept on working. The torches did not go out.

Eventually I rolled to my feet and found that the ambrosia had worked well enough. I made sure my sword was unscathed and confirmed that my lost shoe was now worthless before moving towards the entrance.

I was doing my best not to think much.

_I see how it is! You leave me to fight, then ditch your brave savior?_

I swear, I heard the words as if they'd been spoken aloud. Grief struck hard and fast, like a blow to the head with a club. Quite suddenly I realized how much I was going to miss Mr. Bombastic. More than I thought I would. It was sad, the thought that he'd no longer be roaming the mazes corridors in search of a victory over them. Alone or with me or with that girlfriend he'd been determined to get. Lost and afraid and slave to this place but, in his own mind, free as he could be.

A shame there'd only been one way out.

Bianca was waiting for me, though, so I shouldered it and kept moving.

My foot tapped a bone by accident. I spared it a glance. It was the skull, jaw still attached. That was when I remembered that no ghost ever left the maze.

No living person ever leaves, either.

I knelt down and picked up the skull. It was wet with dog saliva and other things I don't want to think about. Relatively hollow, too, with most of its innards scooped out through a hole bashed invisibly in the bottom.

_You,_ the thoughts rudely shoved themselves into my mind. A mix of feelings too complex to decipher accompanied them. _Did you die, too?_

_No. I was looking for you. You had to be hanging around somewhere. Nobody ever escapes this maze, not really. Every time I leave, I come back. Every ghost who knows of it, I've found in here. This place isn't one you ever beat. It doesn't play its game very fair._

_Psh. **I** beat it, _he insisted.

_I see that._

_Oh, come here to gloat, huh? To me?_

_No. I don't think I could gloat about this if I tried._ The tension in his mind loosened a bit. _I wanted to ask you a favor._

_You ask too many. Waaaaaay to many. Kings don't owe favors to peasants, dead or alive. Now quit standing here like and idiot or get a move on, else you and I will be trapped in this place forever. And I'm not spending an eternity with your hopeless butt._

_I'm asking anyway. Do you want to help me defeat the maze?_

He was quiet for a moment. Dull thoughts flashed in his mind. Faded memories. Rusty calculations. _And I would help you do that why?_

_Because I need your help to do it, and... And because of these soft hearts we share._

I showed him my plan. Didn't take long; it was rather simple.

Eventually he replied with, _Well, I guess you're the only person I can talk to while I'm dead. Which makes you the only person I can save. Who am I to waste the awesome potential I was given?_

I mimicked the skull's grin. _I humbly accept the aid of your bull-headed egomaniac majesty._

_Get a move on. Standing still will get you killed. Moron._

We set off at a leisure pace down the lit hallway, my feet making uneven sounds with each step. Pad, slip, pad, slip. They were the only sound aside from the maze's normal background, and the seal of my isolation.

Mr. Bombastic bluntly recalled the pain of being socked in the side.

_Right. My fault. What were those things, anyway? You talked like you knew._

_I know everything. They were Cynocephali. Originally from Africa, I think, but got mixed up with everything else there when the Europeans came in and carved it all up. Had a few wars, got rejected by the gods for their violence, vowed to avenge their dead on the humans and their patron Olympians, et cetera. They moved with the core of Western Civilization and I guess eventually, when they started dying out, retreated down here. Thought they could claim the place as their own._

_Okay, Mr. Smart Guy,_ I retorted as I explored an exit tunnel. _If you're so smart then you know I need your name and address for this to work. Why don't you come off it and tell me what it is already?_

_Psh. Names are stupid. Nicknames are better._

_My name is Nico. My sister is Bianca, but she died, so I'm on a quest to get her back. Minos wasn't a very good nickname for me, I guess. You were right about that._

_...Phil. My name is Phil, and my mother, Renee Raggins, lives in Missouri. You'll find her house there._

oOo

I watched quietly from the plush, pampered bushes - who pampers _plants?_ - for the screen door to open. Of course, it was still crisp with winter, so the real door was closed as well. Which explained why Ms. Raggins hadn't noticed anything yet. But the car was in the driveway and if I listened quietly I could hear the bustle of quiet, peaceful life inside the average house; cabinets opening and closing, a sink turning on and off, the nice smell of dinner wafting out of the window.

The memories Phil had shared with me of his mother were so nice, so wonderful. He had not told me why he had left. Perhaps he'd just wanted more adventure. Or gotten lost and been stuck in the maze's trap for these last few years, unable to return home. No telling, really.

All the way here, we had marveled at how fresh and big the air was up on the surface. Phil had also accidentally let it slip how much he hated having to return to his mother like this.

But neither of us complained.

The creaking of floorboards caught my attention. Instinctively, I lowered myself deeper into the shrubs. Ms. Ragggins was approaching the door.

It may have been to get some air. Or to see a neighbor. Or to hop in the car to shop for some last-minute ingredients. It's not like the postman ran at six in the evening, or that there was much for her to do outside on her own at this time of year. I don't know why she came out when she did.

I couldn't see the porch, but I saw her gaze drop to it as soon as the door opened. She frowned and knelt down. Then she stood, the skull in one hand, the note in the other.

"Sorry," I saw her mouth in confusion. That was all I'd written. Then she examined the skull. If it was weird or creepy to her, she did a good job of hiding it.

It did not take long for her to recognize what she held. She stumbled back against the house with wide eyes. The note was dropped. A hand lifted to her mouth, and she sobbed. She sobbed for a good five minutes.

Then she quieted, wiping the tears away. They were private and it was an awful transgression of every code she knew, apparently, to cry in public. Her gaze went up and down the street quickly. Looking for witnesses, or for me, the culprit of this crime?

Her gaze was not very accusing, either way.

She went inside, and from there I heard more crying. I stayed until she had quieted down to silent tears. Then I crept across backyards and alleyways back to the crappy old post office. There, on the outside air vent, was the glowing delta that marked the maze's entrance.

It was such a relief to enter it again, and to enter it alone. Alone with Bianca's memory and my task at the forefront of my mind, and my pain well hidden, my weaknesses well guarded. To play the game to my best once more. As shabby as that was.

It was also nice not to hear Mr. Bombastic blabbing until my ears melted. I could not sense him anymore. In fact, it wasn't likely he was even in the skull by now.

There was no way in Tartarus that the maze would have him again. He was gone from it forever.

_I hate you,_ I thought towards the maze as I plodded down the stone stairs.I hated it. I hated not having Bianca there to soothe my fears or tell me that hate was destructive. If I ever got the chance, I would beat that maze. As surely as I'd get my sister back and make things okay again, somehow. I'd destroy it. But somewhere in me I was growing very aware that I would never actually escape it.

There was only one boy in the whole world who escaped the Labyrinth.

oOo

"The [funeral] bells will ring when the blind lead the blind, because the dead can't testify." - Billy Talent.

oOo

**Nic: Have I ever mentioned that I hate Nico?**

**Nyx: (head down on desk, does not speak)  
**

**Nic: Right. Right. She wants minimal comment from us on this. There would be none, in fact, save for this important note; for those who read DoD, fear not. It has not been abandoned. The next chapter should be out soon. Details to come then.  
**

**Nyx: (sips sweat tea, counts off pages on her fingers, and nods)**

**Nic: Since we're here, please do comment. This took up much of Nyx's time and I'm not sure if she's proud of it or not, but I think it deserves a review, hm? (hushes voice) That means review or suffer my screwdriver wrath. You don't want to end Lazy Season with a face like Ethan's, I promise. (Sweet smile) See you guys soon!  
**


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